


songs about breaking up

by popocco



Series: don't say it out loud [2]
Category: Gintama
Genre: (sarazanmai title card voice) I Want To Connect But Fuck Blue Lives, Casual Relationship, Emotional Constipation, Established Relationship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pining, Road Trip, Self-reconciliation with the fact that one belongs to an institution of fascist violence, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Trauma, Undercover, i've already gotten ahead of myself here but those are Some Themes to look forward to, longfic, mild violence, tags/rating subject to change upon update
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2020-05-28 17:39:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19399123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popocco/pseuds/popocco
Summary: Gintoki, with no other choice in the face of his quickly dwindling reserve of meal funds, accepts a dangerous job in reluctant partnership with the Shinsengumi. From before he even accepts it he's begun on the wrong foot, and with every new development, things only continue to get more ugly and complicated on more personal levels than he thought he even had.(Set in canon a few weeks after Mitsuba's two episodes in the limelight.)





	1. Both what you do and don't remember will definitely come back to bite you in the ass, so either way you're screwed

**Author's Note:**

> god i hope i know what i'm getting into, here... rest assured i DO have most of this planned already, but this is the first intentional  
> multi-chapter fic i've attempted in literally over a decade so i'm KINDA NERVOUS lol
> 
> the updating schedule will certainly not be something regular, so just... bear with me, if you can, orz

Gintoki is minding his own business, being a bother to absolutely nobody at all, when the patrol car prowls up beside him and starts to roll down its passenger-side window.

He ignores it. 

His scooter’s in need of repair again, and gas, and he doesn’t have the cash to spare on either of those, so he’s walking. The afternoon herd of pedestrians is pretty mellow today, parting around the vehicle with general obedience and a minimum low murmur of complaint.

“I didn’t do it,” Gintoki says, without sparing a glance, before whoever’s in there starts reading him his rights. He just keeps plodding on home with as best an air of indifference as he can pull, holding his depressingly lightweight paper bag of dinner groceries.

He doesn’t actually know if he did it or not. The statistical probability of this nebulous “it” being somehow his fault is probably an academic pass, if the teacher’s a forgiving sort and grades on a curve. But whoever’s about to start grilling him doesn’t need to know about this vague hunch of his.

“The Chief wants to talk to you about something,” some voice he doesn’t particularly recognize tells him with a definite hint of reluctance. How nice-they’re on the same page about this entire exchange, then.

“Pass. Your Chief is pretty used to being stood up already, so it shouldn’t be too hard on him. Tell him if he wants to take me on a dinner date he’s gotta ask me out himself, and cover the bill.”

The car is still blocking almost the whole road to keep crawling along beside him. People are starting to give Looks. Urrgghhhh.

“It’s about a job. He’s too busy to come chasing after a layabout like you himself, so decide if you’re interested or not already so I can get back to doing some actual work too.”

Well! Turns out this _is_ all Gintoki’s fault after all. For being so goddamn chummy with so many of the frickin’ Shinsengumi’s top dogs lately. He’s always been more of a cat person but life sure does seem to love throwing all its rowdiest, shittiest mutts at him all covered in fleas and mud, over and over and _over_ again. He’s starting to develop a fucking allergy.

“That’s funny,” he sneers at the prick in the car, getting a look at him for the first time. Nope- never seen this guy before in his damn life. And that’s more downright annoying than if he had. 

“I don’t think I recall ever joining the same payroll as you dirtbags. Unless you’re about to tell me I’ve got a whole stack of big fat government checks to come and collect, as far as _I_ know, none of your jobs have a damn thing to do with _me_.”

The grunt in the passenger seat looks flustered for a nice moment, which does something to soothe the nasty irritation Gintoki has been starting to nurse with a vengeance. His youngish features clenching in combined frustration-arrogance-affront is a very satisfying sight.

He must be new, because instead of barking at Gintoki a bit like most of his other coworkers so enjoy doing, he bites his tongue and downright _sulks_ a “Not interested, then.”

Then he gives a nod to his buddy behind the wheel, the car starts to try moving ahead quicker through the crowd, and Gintoki realizes as he sees himself get smaller in the rearview mirror that he probably just made a huge mistake.

To say funds have been tight lately would be grossly reductive. All of Edo has been keeping perfect track of its pets, nobody has been cheating on anybody else or even worrying about the possibility, everyone’s contract labour is going without a single damn hitch, and every last local corner store, family restaurant, hole in the wall noodle shop or drag club is full to fucking bursting with competent and willing employees.

Income is in the _negative_ , just from keeping himself, a dog the size of an elephant, and a girl with the stomach of _five_ elephants fed enough to be capable of basic movement. Shinpachi has been cooking meals at his own house on his sister’s grocery money basically every day now. It’s shrunk the black hole in the middle of the Yorozuya’s coffers by a… not completely insignificant amount, and he’s been bringing whatever leftovers he can spare in half-full tupperware containers, but the only thing Gintoki’s had in his pantry for about a week and a half now is rice, and gambling for side dishes at the pachinko parlour has taken his stash of petty change right down to zero as of this evening.

He _needs_ a job.

… No matter how his dignity will suffer for it.

Hell, who is he kidding. When did he ever have any of that pointless shit in the first place.

He spits out a few expletives and takes off after the car at a full sprint. It’s still close enough for him to be able to run the distance between them with long, leaping strides, and make a lunge for the closest door handle. He uses his grip on it to pull himself closer, throws it open, and dives into the back seat.

“--What the hell?!?! What are you-” Gintoki’s new bestest friend sputters, trying to draw his blade and turn around with it inside the car. There’s not enough room, so all he ends up doing is flinging his elbows around ridiculously.

“Changed my mind,” Gintoki says as simply and confidently as he can between big panting breaths of air. Track and field was never his specialty. Fuck. Ahh, his _throat_.

The driver, another youngish looking punk he doesn’t recognize in the slightest, keeps throwing wary looks into his windshield mirror and seeming pretty unsure of whether or not he should even keep his foot on the pedal, but his partner is _furious_.

“Get the fuck out!! You think you can show this kinda disrespect and get away with it, you little bitch?! You’re messing with the _Shinsengumi_ , you better be saying your fucking prayers-”

“Hang on a sec. You’re arresting me or something now, right? Then like… shouldn’t you keep me _inside_ the car, instead of kicking me out? You’re not very good at this yet, are you.”

If the colour of the newbie’s face was red before, it’s turned positively crimson now. Or maybe scarlet. Either way, he’s so mad at this point that the speech centre of his brain has taken a little vacation, and left him with nothing to do with his mouth besides sort of impotently flap it a bit.

Gintoki flashes a big old grin to the increasingly troubled-looking driver. “Guess you two get to waste even more time on this _layabout_ here, huh? Ain’t it your lucky day.” 

He gives a hearty smack or two to the back of the driver’s seat, and gets more comfortable in his own. His bag of groceries fusses a bit about staying upright on the cushion, so he puts it on the floor instead.

“Put your seatbelt on please,” the driver asks. Awww. How nice. This one’s kinda cute.

“Heh, my bad, my bad,” Gintoki simpers at him, but does it anyways. He’s awful tempted to kick his boots off, and get his bare feet _all_ over the lovely springy leather cushions of this fine vehicle.

Actually, nothing’s really stopping him from doing that. He leans as comfortably and casually against the window as he can and pulls his foot up over his knee.

“By the way,” he posits, to whichever of them will answer first- his money’s on the driver for now. “I don’t think I recall ever making the acquaintance of you _fine_ gentlemen, before today. How’d you know where to find me?”

He’s halfway to wiggling his boot off as quietly and subtly as he can when he loses his bet against his own self, and the highly crabby passenger grunt answers with gleeful spite over his shoulder.

“Chief told us to just do _nothing_ in Kabukicho as long as we could, and the deadbeat-looking white haired slob we were searching for would show up all on his own, to mimic our behaviour.”

He flicks a nasty look and a nastier smile back at Gintoki, finally deigning to make eye contact. “Looks like he was right!”

Gintoki returns the glance with a deep, laughing crinkle between his eyes. He pulls his footwear off, slouches deep into his seat, and kicks the guy in the face with his bare foot.

***

The barracks aren’t actually very far away from where the car stopped him, but from several physical fights between the front and back seat and the resulting number of near traffic accidents, it feels like a five hour road trip where nobody in the car had enough coffee in the morning.

Gintoki lost one of his shoes out the window when he threw it, so he steps through the compound’s gate with the other one in his hand- to keep up appearances, see. It would look haphazard and unprofessional if only one of his feet was bare and dusty, but if they match, then it seems intentional. A fashion statement. A political statement, about how, spiritually, he had to fucking drag himself here through the dirt for a job that he _wants_ like he wants a rash of oozing sores on his taint.

The door of his chauffeur slams shut and it rolls away behind him, doubtless so the  
occupants can go harass some other innocent person in the middle of their errands. Gintoki flips the bird at it over his shoulder and spits pettily on to the ground, before making his way inside.

He can’t really remember the last time he was here, or what he was doing, but in comparison the place seems kinda… empty. Which is probably better than it being packed like a tin of pickled herring, full of the kinda boisterous roughhousing punks the organization seems to attract, and just as smelly. But it’s weird. 

“Weird” is the word he settles on, instead of “creepy” or “lonely”.

The long outdoor hall around the courtyard is where he ends up, without any prior direction, or obnoxious recruits in his way yelling at him for trespassing, or even _worse_ any of the older hands who’ve come to recognize him beaming about catching a drink some time. Normally there’d be at least _one_ off-duty slacker out here or in the inner garden, enjoying the air, or the sun, or whatever it is the fuzz do when they’re not making problems for decent hardworking people. But there’s nobody in this part of the building either.

Gintoki is starting to get _annoyed_ , about what he’s even meant to be fuckin’ doing here in the first place, if there isn’t even anybody around to talk down to him about the privilege of his terms of employment. 

He’s getting ready to step down into the courtyard and start tearing up plants, when there’s the slide of an opening door from further down along the corridor. The guy coming out with a hurried gait, he looks kinda familiar- yeah, it’s _him_ isn’t it, that bald dude, higher ranking, what’s his name? Harasho?

Whatever, doesn’t matter. Still enough to work with.

Gintoki turns fully towards him as he keeps stamping down the hallway, raises his hand in a friendlier gesture than any of these jerks deserve after the evening he’s had so far.

“Hey, how’s--”

“Conference hall,” Baldie tells him, thumbing over his shoulder to the room he just came from, and keeps on walking.

Without a second glance, or even a _first_ , he disappears around a corner at his same rushed pace.

Gintoki feels himself gain a substantial rank up, from annoyed to _pissed_.

He expels a frustrated, stressed out half-shout and kicks the nearest support pillar, realizes when it’s already too late that his feet are bare, and crumples to his knee to clutch at the victims of circumstance that have become his toes.

Good. This is good. This pain will become his vengeance, and he will visit it tenfold upon the bastards who’ve been having so much fun jerking him around, when he could be at home already making dinner for his bloody family at this very moment.

It will become his blade. It will be as the sword of Damocles and strike true upon the waiting necks of those fated to feel its edge for their crimes.

He limps the rest of the way down the hall and it becomes his spare boot, flung viciously towards the face of the first person he sees in the conference hall.

“ _Ding dong you assholes_ , your guest of honour for the night has arrived,” he barks into the shocked silence of the meeting space. 

It’s empty, besides for the two people sat cross-legged around a mess of unfolded maps and paper documents. One of them is Kondou Isao, acting Chief of the Shinsengumi Special Police Force, with an expression of blank shock on his rough and stubbly face. The other one--

\-- oh.

Uh-oh.

The other one, peeling the shin’s length of Gintoki’s leather boot off his cheek and the side of his mouth, where the momentum it slapped him with made it stick- the owner of a brand new vivid red welt covering a good 40% of his classically good looking features- the man with the pair of sharp, piercing, battle-honed eyes staring with silent fury at where Gintoki is still panting in the doorway from his outburst, is Kondou’s second-in-command, the _real_ brains and tactical brawn of the whole outfit, the savagely thorough and ruthless Oni Vice Chief, Hijikata Toushirou.

He gets to his feet with harsh efficiency, his fingers so tight around Gintoki’s boot that the material of it audibly squeaks and crumples.

“Toushi, wait-” Kondou keeps glancing between the two of them, and starts to rise to his own feet in contained panic at the direct path Hijikata is striding with purpose towards Gintoki’s spot in the doorway.

“Smoke break,” Hijikata announces, with a grim level of control over his tone of voice. 

When he’s in striking distance, he raises the fist holding Gintoki’s boot and thrusts it into its owner’s nose with the force of a full right hook. 

While his senses are busy with sudden pain, the sight of nothing but black leather and the stench of his own foot odour, Gintoki feels Hijikata bodily shoulder past him through the door and keep going down the corridor. The harsh _slap_ of some other door closing with a slam echoes through the courtyard and into the conference hall.

Gintoki peels his weapon of choice off his own face to see Kondou sat back down cross-legged over his collage of case materials. He’s got his forehead between his broad fingertips, sighing down at the top of his knee.

“Did you _have_ to make a scene, this time?” he groans, not really asking a question.

“I dunno,” Gintoki snottily counters him, pinching the bridge of his nose and sniffling, dabbing around under his nostrils for too much moisture- not bleeding, at least, that’s a relief. “Did _you_ have to give me a fucking obstacle course to get through first, of your brattiest newbies and a whole empty labyrinth of a building, just to let me know what the hell it even is that you _want_ from me?”

Kondou sighs again, deeper than before. “They were rude to you, weren’t they,” he says with a weary look in his eyes, again not really making a question of it. “I knew I should’ve sent someone else.”

“No arguments there,” Gintoki grumbles, entering the hall to take Hijikata’s old spot on the floor. “Doesn’t even look like you _have_ anyone else, though. Did I forget a civic holiday, or something? Or did they all just finally _quit_ at the same time.”

“Today’s the funeral,” Kondou informs him simply, with a humourless little smile. “We couldn’t spare much time to plan it right away, not with all the casualties and arrests and seizures we still had to work through. It wound up having to be put off for a pretty long time, until things calmed down enough that we could spare anybody who wanted to go.”

Funeral? 

“I was able to drop by real quick to pay respects myself, earlier. But I can’t be away too long, not with things unfolding here the way they are.”

“Wait a second. Who-” Gintoki starts to ask, feeling a deep, heavy reminder stir into motion at the bottom of his heart, before he needs to complete the thought. Kondou’s quietly sad wrinkle at the edge of the eyes fills in the rest, needlessly, to overflowing.

He forgot, he realizes, with a dark, slow chill of disgust towards himself.

He had the privilege, for once, of being _able_ to forget, because his own life didn’t change a whit.

He spent some time in a family restaurant, then in a rich man’s sitting room, then in a private hospital suite brighter than it had any right to be, then in a dark, empty, silent hallway. That’s the only involvement he ever had. A handful of brief encounters and conversations, and now the appropriately small amount of shame and sadness left to express to the people who lost somebody far more precious than just a casual acquaintance.

“Shit,” Gintoki sighs, feeling any last vestige of irritation shred itself neatly into pulpy, soggy regret. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Kondou urges him, with the ghost of something more firm and proud in his tired expression. “Mitsuba-san would hate it if a joker like you was walking around feeling _sorry_.”

“That’s true,” Gintoki agrees with a weak smirk. “I’ll have to go pay a visit sometime, and set myself straight. She’s a hard one to deal with when you’ve said something wrong.”

“Yeah,” Kondou laughs, a wry, sharp-sounding thing cracking at the sides from the weight of too many emotions. “You better put your heart into it.”

In the time he spent with the lady herself, Gintoki never found himself thinking in awed disappointment specifically towards the great big oafish man sat across from him now, when it came to the shocking oversight of her funny and charming person in general. How could _anyone_ let her wait on the sidelines her whole life- forget her brother’s fumbling peers.

He realizes, until right this moment, in perfect view of the fragile and fully open grief in Kondou’s whole bearing, he never thought him more than another faceless silhouette outside the operating theatre late that night, while Mitsuba’s little brother held her hand and wept.

Another ignorant misconception, possible only from his own relative position of detachment. Completely, heartlessly wrong.

This man also lost a family member. And he can’t be at her funeral tonight, because he’s got a job to give to the wretch who let himself forget she even entered his life and left it only a handful of weeks ago.

With a skewering jut of self-loathing, like a corkscrew in his lung, Gintoki changes the subject. It’s not such a burden on him- he’ll keep on wishing he could have spent a bit more time with someone clever and fun, but that’s the most bereft he’s got the right to ever feel about this. The least he can do right now is spare the guy struggling not to fall apart right in front of him the cruelty of having to actively stop thinking about her at his own behest.

“So what’ve you got for me, you big ape.” He plants the palm of his hand on his knee, with a muffled but nonetheless striking _smack_ through his clothes. All eager, confident smiles. All business. One of his easiest, well-worn disguises.

“Right.” Kondou clears his throat, flicks something away from the corner of his eye, and naturally adopts a no-nonsense posture to rival Gintoki’s own. Easy  
does it.

“Well, as you can see,” he starts, but makes no gesture towards the spread between the two of them, “I’m short on people.” His thick brow is straight and steady under the reason for what he’s saying.

“It’s not just tonight- a lot of us were injured in that mess of a sting op you caught the end of, back then, and most are still unfit for active duty. The remainder have been stretched thin on the follow-up, on helping the city’s general police divisions with all the gaps they just can’t cover with their own guys, and on preexisting cases of joui activity. There’ve been a handful of new guys in the meantime, but they don’t have the training or experience for this. We considered the Oniwabanshuu, but in the end they’re not a good fit, and we probably don’t have the budget for even one of them anyways.”

“You _do_ have the budget, though, for one down-and-out private business owner who is visibly desperate for clientele, though, don’t you?” Ginoki interjects, with a defeated kind of humour. He is gonna get absolutely _gouged_ on this, isn’t he.

“Right you are,” Kondou grins, with a cheesy finger-pistol. Ugh.

“Before I get into any of the details- this whole thing is highly time-sensitive, and _highly_ secret. I don’t like it either, but, you need to know-” His gaze is level, direct, and _serious_. Gintoki already sees with depressing clarity were this is going.

“Don’t even bother telling me,” he sighs, feeling the beginnings of a very big, very long headache. “Until I agree to do it, you can’t tell me anything about it, can you.”

“I wish it wasn’t the case,” Kondou says, and maybe Gintoki can even believe him there, just on a professional basis. “If we go ahead with only whatever resources we can spare ourselves, it’ll be a lot more dangerous, and failure will be a _lot_ more likely. We _need_ some outside help on this one, and not being able to properly inform that help right off the bat is making it pretty damn hard to get any at all.”

Gintoki pretends, just for the sake of it, that he isn’t already committed to whatever this dangerous mess actually is out of pure financial necessity.

“Well, start with what you _can_ tell me. My pay, for example.”

He braces himself for disappointment and anger.

“500,000 yen, with a partial advance, and all on-the-job expenses covered separately.”

“ _Pleasure_ doing business with you, my good fellow!! Say the word, you need _only_ say the word, and this humble servant to the institution of civil security is at your beck and call!”

If he shakes Kondou’s hand any less vigorously he might realize just _how much_ room he’s got to barter, here.

Five hundred thou.

_Five hundred thou!!!_

All he’s gotta do is coast through to the end of whatever overrated, overhyped variety of scavenger hunt he’s just agreed to, and he can finally get the Old Hag off his back about _all_ of his overdue rent. He can get his scooter fixed and refueled. He can eat _meat_ again.

Meat.

Fresh _meat!_

“Is, uh, can I take this as a sign of your non-retractable agreement, then?” Kondou seems thrown by the wild enthusiasm he’s being shown, but someone on a steady salary could never understand.

Gintoki will get to eat _meat_ again.

“Look, if you need my signature on something then just show me _where_. Here’s your verbal confirmation: Yorozuya Gin-chan is on the job, one hundred and fifty percent. That number you gave me _better not_ have changed when it’s time for the invoice, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” Kondou laughs, with blatant relief seeping into his tone and body language. “Glad to have you aboard. You’re gonna have your money’s worth in trouble, I promise you that.”

Whatever it is, Gintoki feels certain to his very core that he can handle it with one hand tied behind his back. He gets down and dirty more than any of these coddled over-groomed show-dogs could ever even manage to have nightmares about. With the promise of _all_ his immediate day-to-day struggles evaporating like water on the coals in a first-class health spa, in this moment, he is invincible.

“I _think_ I can manage. Just give it to me straight, Mr. Chief- what’re we up against.”

“Give it to you straight, huh… Well, if you’re totally sure about that…”

A flurry of excited nods rattles Gintoki’s brain around a little bit. “Just spit it out already. You’re not giving away cars on a game show, here.”

Kondou’s awkward smile falters completely, and he gives a long sigh through his nose.

“Alright then.”

His eyebrows make that hard, rigid line from before.

“What do you know about the Harusame space pirates?”

Gintoki feels his stomach transmute instantly into cold, solid lead, and threaten to drop right out of his ass.


	2. The bigger a family is, the more problems they've all got with each other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extensive shop talk both clarifies and complicates what Gintoki's new job actually _is_. He learns the "mysterious" identity of his partner, sets a date for their departure, and overhears a few things he was probably better off staying ignorant of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a very dialogue-heavy update! fun to write, definitely, but also kind of a challenge in its own way. hopefully this shit isn't already too complicated lol

“Harusame?”

With lightning-quick crisis thinking and an unflinching poker face impressive to even himself, Gintoki _innocently_ begs clarification on the devastatingly troublesome moniker he’s just been told. For the very first time, as far as Kondou knows.

“What’s that, some kinda men’s cologne?”

Ergh. Might be laying it on a bit thick, there- thankfully the gorilla seems none the wiser.

“Ha! Sounds like it could be, doesn’t it.”

Thank god he’s got such an easily roused sense of humour. Gintoki’s gut still feels like it’s shrinking into a raisin.

“Nah, the Shinsengumi hasn’t gotten itself wrapped up in corporate espionage, unfortunately for everyone involved here.”

If _only_ it were that.

“Simply put- they’re the biggest, meanest organized crime ring in the whole damn galaxy right about now.”

“Ya don’t say,” Gintoki comments, with a queasy smile. Like they haven’t almost killed him and most of the people he cares about _twice_ in recent memory.

“They do pretty much everything in the book, and they don’t half-ass it. But what specifically concerns this job is smuggling- illegal arms smuggling, to be precise.”

Gintoki sarcastically wonders if there is such a thing as _legal_ arms smuggling, but holds his tongue.

“We recently got an anonymous tip,” Kondou continues, finally reaching the point of all this colourful explanation. “There’s supposedly been suspicious Amanto movement in a little port town a ways away from Edo, and someone local thought it was important enough to call in about it. If these guys _are_ the ones involved, and if the cargo being moved really is weaponry like the caller thinks, then they were right.”

“Wait- hang on a sec.” Gintoki already has a _bad_ feeling about the answer he’s gonna get, but he asks anyways: “I’m hearing an _awful_ lot of “if”s, here. Is this tip the only damn thing we’ve got to work with?”

“For the moment… yes.” To his credit, Kondou looks pretty sincerely apologetic.

“You’re _shitting_ me. That is way too suspicious- you _know_ you’re getting totally played, here, right? Come _on_.”

He can’t fucking believe it.

This is already a complete disaster.

“Trust me,” Kondou says, with a bit of an irritated snap in his tone. “The possibility of that _has_ been addressed, and at length. But the point is this: why, and _how_ , would someone create that kind of false lead in the first place?”

“I can think of about a thousand reasons right here and now, if you need some help,” Gintoki offers, letting himself sound just as snide and impatient as he legitimately is.

“I’m sure you can,” Kondou smirks right back at him. “And _all_ of them bear investigating further anyways. You just proved it yourself, a minute ago- the name of the Harusame isn’t something that any average Odagiri Joe off the street is familiar with. And the call came from the exact area code of the place this whole thing concerns- if it’s all a lie, and there’s a _pretty decent_ chance that it is, then the person behind it went through a _lot_ more trouble than what someone would ordinarily take for just a prank call. And the reason for that can’t be anything well-meaning.”

“Fine, ok, _fine_ already,” Gintoki groans, surrendering to the absurd goddamn trainwreck that this new job of his has already proven. “Just… tell me what I’m supposed to _do_ with any of this.”

“That’s the spirit!” Kondou freaking _sparkles_ at him, reaching over to bestow a loud and jovial smack on the shoulder. Gintoki wants to give it back to him, right in the teeth, with interest. “Do you want the short answer, or the long answer?”

“Don’t care,” Gintoki grumbles. He knows he’s gonna get both anyways.

“Well, the short answer is this: good old-fashioned legwork. And I _mean_ “leg” work.”

“I’m going all the way out to this podunk myself, aren’t I.”

“You sure are! Not _by_ yourself, though- you’ll have a partner for this. And Yamazaki’s already been out there casing things under the radar, for the past couple of days now. He’ll be your support, once you arrive. I’m sure he’s already got a lead or two to follow up on.”

Gintoki is already too exhausted and resigned to feel very much frustration towards this new information, but he tries anyways, damn him.

“You’re talking like you haven’t heard a single peep yet on this end, from that Jimmy-kun of yours.”

“Hah! Perceptive of you- I’ve got high hopes now, for what your investigation is gonna turn up.”

If Kondou keeps looking _this_ cheerful about the motherfucking debacle he’s helping to orchestrate in the complete dark here, Gintoki is gonna have no choice but to smack him one.

“This place is way out in the sticks, though, to better answer your question. They’ve barely got electric lighting, so we knew going in it would be tough to set up a private long-distance radio frequency. We sent Zaki with everything he needs for one, though- it’s just a matter of him finding some place completely secure for his station. Don’t worry about him! He’s the best man we’ve got for this.”

The beaming pride Kondou’s got on his face now is… marginally heartwarming, at the very least. Good for you, wayward Jimmy.

“Before we get to the long answer,” Gintoki drawls, not remotely bothering anymore to hide the general feeling of tired reluctance that has completely overtaken him, “because I _know_ you’ve still got that waiting for me down the pipeline. This “partner” you say I’m gonna have.”

“Yep. What about him?”

“He’s the guy taking a smoke break right now, isn’t he.”

“He’s back, actually.” Kondou beckons at the doorway behind Gintoki’s spot on the floor. “Good news, Toushi! We’ve finally got your team together.”

“Thrilling,” Hijikata answers with a flat, harsh tone of voice.

Gintoki hears his footsteps approaching, certainly, but the scent of him is quicker. A potent blend of tobacco and anger.

“You’re in my seat,” he states with a positively icy expression on his face, when he stops to stand imposingly over where Gintoki is sitting. The welt on his cheek is already much more pronounced than it was a few minutes ago.

“Don’t see your name on the floorboards,” Gintoki sneers back up at him.

“Maybe you need a closer look.”

He’s already got his foot raised to kick Gintoki’s head down on to the hardwood, but it was an obvious telegraph. He finds himself caught by the ankle without a problem.

“Take a look your _own_ damn self.”

He gives Hijikata’s leg a good hard yank, displacing his centre of gravity and sending his supporting sock-clad opposite foot sliding right out from under him. He lands flat on his ass. It’s funny, so Gintoki gives a few nice loud victorious laughs.

“Yeah,” he hears Kondou sigh, while Hijikata throws his first punch. “Just get this out of your systems nice and early.”

The two of them spend several minutes boxing each other while sat down on the floor. Nobody lands any decent hits, but there are enough near grazes and shoddy blocks for them both to earn a fair share of mildly painful little scuffs to the face and head. It feels, and absolutely has to _look_ , completely ridiculous. It is monstrously unsatisfying, and only ends when Gintoki is rendered utterly fed up by a glancing strike off the tip of his nose that reminds him he was already hit there earlier by his own shoe.

“Fine, fine, _enough_!” he shouts, through a sideways duck that exposes the rim of his ear to a half-successful jab. “Just take your goddamn _spot_ back, I don’t give a shit anymore!”

Before he has to evade any more punches he slides himself backwards on the floor and out of Hijikata’s range, to the approximate median between him and Kondou. Now they all make a big shitty triangle around the, insofar as he knows himself, completely useless collection of papers on the ground in the middle there.

Hijikata wordlessly scoots into his old place without a glance, as if he _isn’t_ acting like a petulant five year old.

“Kondou-san,” he says, completely refusing to acknowledge anything that just happened. “I don’t agree with your staffing decisions for this assignment.”

“Too bad,” Kondou smiles. “We’ve finally got someone for the job now, who’s already agreed, and we can’t afford to put things off any longer on this end. You’ve both got your own incentives to do this _properly_.” He makes a very pointed, lingering glance at the two of them individually.

“ _I_ don’t have a problem playing nice,” Gintoki feels the need to assert. Because he _doesn’t._ “But I think your dog here needs some last-minute training. It seems really pointlessly territorial. I don’t want my hand bitten off for choosing the wrong hotel bed.”

He keeps an eye on him the entire time he’s talking, but Hijikata remains stalk still in his precious Spot with nary a flick of a glimpse in his own direction. His posture is rigid and disciplined, as always. Face still tightly maintaining that same professional scowl it’s always got.

Ha. Fine, then. Gintoki could use a good challenge to keep him busy in whatever downtime they’ll have out there in the boonies.

“Well, it’ll be a while yet till you’re faced with the luxury of choosing hotel beds,” Kondou follows up to Gintoki’s prodding with flawless timing. He _would_ be pretty handy at diffusing bad tempers, wouldn’t he, responsible for as many ruffians as he is. Tch. 

… Besides that, though…

“Wait a damn second. You’ve been making it sound like this whole thing kicks off the _second_ everyone’s ready, so whaddya mean it will “be a while”? You _are_ covering travel expenses, right? I definitely heard you say that, didn’t I?”

“Oh, you definitely did!” Kondou is _beaming_ at him again, and Gintoki has learned this means he is about to be confronted with something truly infuriating. 

“We’ve got your camping supplies all set up already, no need to worry about that.”

He _hates_ being right, sometimes.

“We-” It physically hurts him to say this. “We’re walking? We’re walking all the way there?”

“It’s only a few days on foot,” Hijikata says, like that’s _nothing_. He’s finally looking Gintoki’s way again, but it’s with a palpable dare in his stern expression: _Go ahead and complain. You’re the only one who’s gonna look bad._

“ _Hah_! Just making sure,” Gintoki blusters, feeling his chest puff up and out beyond any real control over himself. “Now I know to dig up my best running shoes. I placed top ten in the Kabukicho Neighbourhood Association Annual Marathon last year, you know.”

He didn’t. He jogged for seven minutes thirty three seconds and then collapsed wheezing into a fold-out chair at an ice cream booth along the route, where he watched the rest of the race eating a gigantic banana split that made him sick when he got home.

“Shouldn’t be anything you can’t handle, then,” Kondou nods. The look he’s got has a disturbing hint of knowing to it.

“We’ll go over the precise path you’ll be taking later, but a good portion of it is offroad. You’re gonna cut through the bush for a while and circle around, so you end up approaching from the Southeast instead of directly West from Edo.” He makes a quick loop with his pointer finger on one of the county maps down on the floor there, but Gintoki doesn’t really pay attention.

“I assume there’s a good reason for all this? ‘Cause from where I’m at right now, it just looks like a lot of wasted time and effort before we even get there.”

Gintoki’s got a hunch already, but he’ll let the boss man confirm it himself.

Dangit… normally _he’s_ the boss man. This is taking some getting used to.

“Remember how eager you were to give me reasons that this anonymous tip of ours is total bullshit?”

“Sure. Why, you finally wanna hear some?”

“Yep. Give me your number one likeliest guess.”

“Well, it’s a trap. Obviously.”

“We think so too! Which is why you’re going undercover. As far as anyone knows, the Shinsengumi are _all_ at home here in Edo. A couple of humble travelers heading into town, from the opposite direction, have nothing to do with any concerned phone calls about a potential smuggling racket involving the most dangerous organized criminals in the galaxy.”

Yeah… he figured it was something like that. Sure, it “makes sense”- doesn’t mean it’s gonna suck any less.

 _Just_ one problem, though:

“Um, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but one of these “humble travelers” of yours is effectively the face of your entire freakin’ outfit nowadays.” Gintoki jabs his thumb at Hijikata for the extra little bit of emphasis. “Anyone specifically out to get you guys is _gonna_ recognize this jerk.”

“Why do you think I volunteered for this in the first place,” Hijikata rebuts, with a hard expression and a vaguely haughty tone in his voice. “If my being there can drag whoever’s behind this out into the open that much quicker, we can be done and on the way back within the week.”

His confidence is certainly impressive.

It’s also incredibly goddamn irritating.

“And what if they’re after you specifically, Mr. Front Page? The second you show your face, there’s gonna be a bullet hole in it.”

“Not if you do your job right,” he insists with a glare.

“Oh! I’m flattered beyond words, really, that you have _so_ much faith in me. But I was not under the impression that I’m being hired on as your personal bodyguard slash meat shield, Hijikata- _san_.”

“You’re not,” Kondou interjects, with that annoying pacifying lull to his voice. “Calm down, Yorozuya.”

“I’ll have you know I’m perfectly calm,” Gintoki gripes, the very picture itself of collected poise. He’s perfectly fucking calm.

“Good. That’s also part of why you’re going the long way around, on foot, though. Plausible deniability does a lot more than you’d think, in a tiny little community like the one you’re heading into- trust me. Anyone who’s openly suspicious of whatever cover story you two come up with is just that more likely a culprit.”

Gintoki’s head drops right into the palm of his hand. “You don’t even have a _cover story_ planned?”

“Haha! No, far too many variables to consider before we got a specific person for the job. And I don’t see any reason now to curb your creativity.”

“Oh cut the bullshit already. You’re just leaving every last little thing you don’t gotta do yourself to your _lucky_ new hire here.”

“You haven’t even considered that there could be a _reason_ for that, have you,” Hijikata is quick to accuse, leaping to his Chief’s defense. “Try rubbing your two halves of a brain cell together for a while, about why we’re the only people in this whole section of the barracks right now.”

“Pretty presumptuous of you, telling a guy which parts of himself he should be rubbing.”

Hijikata doesn’t rise to the innuendo, simply continuing to glower expectantly. Gintoki doesn’t have much choice but to do what he suggested, though not in such crude terms.

There’s only one real possibility he can come up with. It sends his forehead plummeting back down into the palm of his hand.

“Time and again I am just, purely amazed,” he sighs, “at what a colossal pain in the ass it is that there are so _many_ of you pricks. Tell me you’ve at least got a suspect or two.”

“ _That’s_ not something you’ve gotta worry about,” Kondou informs him genially, like he’s supposed to be happy to hear it. _No we don’t_ , is what he might as well have just said.

This at least does clear away the last few vestiges of uncertainty Gintoki had, about literally the second highest ranking officer in the whole Shinsengumi skewering himself on a fishing hook and jumping into the lake. On the, _increasingly_ likely, the more he considers it, chance that this entire situation came from someone on the inside, then there aren’t many more consistently trustworthy people than Hijikata to have getting to the bottom of it.

“Christ,” Gintoki mutters, then peers through his fingers at Kondou. “You’ve sure got your fuckin’ hands full with this lot.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” the big softhearted ape grins right back at him, full to bursting of genuine love and fondness.

Gintoki pinches his eyes with his forefinger and thumb, heaves another great big sigh, and curls his hand into a fist so he can rest his cheek all matter-of-fact atop it.

“Well, I think I’ve got just about the whole picture now. When do we leave?”

“Immediately,” Hijikata answers, with ruthless simplicity, “if possible.”

Gintoki feels his face scrunching into a knot, but Kondou quickly spares him the need to voice his own myriad objections.

“That’s probably a bit spartan,” he laughs good naturedly. “When’s the earliest you can be ready?”

Gintoki wants to give himself at least a full week, to laze around and put off all the preparations he’s gotta deal with now, a small handful of which in particular he knows in the depths of his very soul are gonna be _humongously_ troublesome. But he’d get his bluff called right out the gate, as generally idle as these two know that he is. Besides… it’s probably better to have as little time as possible, then, for him to change his mind about this whole damn thing.

“Day after tomorrow, bright and early.”

He hears Hijikata click his tongue unhappily, but Hijikata can go suck on a rotten lemon if he’s too horribly pressed for occupation in the next thirty-six or so hours.

“We’ll hold you to that,” Kondou nods. He gives a great big sigh of his own, and leans back on to the palms of his huge grubby hands. “We’ve got a lot of smaller details we still need to go over, but they can wait for a few minutes. Why don’t you go catch some fresh air for a bit, Yorozuya.”

If Gintoki is being politely kicked out of the conference hall, he’s more than glad to let it happen. He eases back on to his feet, gives his cramping legs a nice indulgent stretch, and makes his way back out into the garden corridor.

He picks a spot to sit and dangle his feet far enough to the side of the doorway to no longer be visible, but still near enough to have a decent shot at overhearing whatever kind of exchange is about to take place inside. Kondou obviously wanted him out of the way for a minute, and without much to immediately contemplate himself, he’s pretty eagerly interested in the potential fruits of eavesdropping.

He’s right to have expected something, but it’s not nearly as juicy or fun as he was hoping.

“You don’t have to be around for the rest of this, Toushi,” he’s able to hear Kondou say clearly, in a gentle murmur. “There’s still time for you to head over.”

“I already told you this morning,” Hijikata counters in his own gruff approximation of quiet. “I’ve got no place showing up.”

“You’re the only one who thinks that,” Kondou says, entirely believing himself. Gintoki easily imagines one of his hands roaming over to rest on Hijikata’s shoulder, and maybe giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“Hah,” Hijikata laughs, but it just sounds like a thin and sarcastic wheeze. “Wanna bet on whether or not Sougo agrees with you?”

“He does,” Kondou urges without pause. “If you would just talk to him about it, you’d see--”

“There’s nothing for us to talk about anymore.” Hijikata’s volume is still at the same low, but his tone has taken on a definite stubborn sharpness which makes it seem just that little bit louder and clearer.

“You _know_ that’s not true. Please, Toushi, if only for your own sake, can you even just _try_ and--”

“I’m done hearing this. I’m going out for another smoke. I’ll be back to go over the plan in a few minutes.”

Gintoki keeps his limbs loose and languid at the sound of approaching footsteps, and continues to just lazily drink in the sunset painting different shapes on the foliage of the garden below. He doesn’t give even a twitch of acknowledgement when Hijikata brusquely walks behind him and continues down the corridor.

He knows… basically nothing at all, about what Mitsuba and Hijikata were or weren’t to each other. Neither she or her kid brother ever brought him up, vaguely or specifically, and he never asked. Simply wasn’t his business- it still isn’t.

But Gintoki remembers just a small handful of things, that make him think he’s got a pretty likely hunch. He remembers waking up to a violent jar in the visitor’s bench he dozed off on, and in his groggy barely conscious state, hearing the Okita brat fling angry and distraught half-truths about someone whose name he absolutely refused to utter. He remembers, earlier than that, from where he knelt at Mitsuba’s side, squinting against a pair of headlamps up at Hijikata’s blurry backlit expression of agonized shock. 

More starkly and heavily still, he remembers sitting out of the way on the hospital rooftop after it was all finally over, and in the early dawn’s quiet air catching the noise of tight and desperate sobs that nobody else was supposed to hear.

She’s someone worth grieving, to him. That much, at least, is clear.

And on the day set aside for precisely that, which he feels some guilty compulsion to deny himself, Gintoki chucked a shoe at his face.

With a weary groan, he reunites his big fucking dipshit head with the open palm of his clueless boot throwing hand. If this job is gonna have any shot whatsoever at succeeding through coordinated teamwork, he’s got a whopping amount of amends he needs to make.

He’s got the next entire day, at the very least, to think long and hard about how to do that.


	3. Any parent who pulls that "do as I say, not as I do" garbage is just a piece of shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gintoki is forced to play his "I Am Essentially Your Legal Guardian" trap card, face up, for instant effect. Nobody is happy about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for your comments!!! i'm so so pleased that people find this enjoyable and exciting, and it makes me all the more eager to get to the REAL fun stuff. so keep your eyes peeled!

By the time Gintoki gets back to his house, the sun is way past set.

He’s not sure exactly _how_ long it took for Kondou to grill him on every last pointless little detail of the traveling route, the stock of supplies he’ll be setting out with, how to receive radio contact if Jimmy-kun gets his frequency set up while they’re on the road, what to do if he steps in poison ivy, how to discreetly and respectfully relieve himself in the wild, the details of their route _again_ , and every other goddamn thing a fussy parent sending their kid off to summer camp could think to quibble over. He’s not sure exactly how long. But it felt like an eternity, so it was definitely upwards of an hour.

Beyond that, it took _another_ eternity to get the percentage of his advance (twenty, after a perfunctory amount of haggling) agreed upon and cashed out. And by that time he had already realized that he left his sad little paper sack of groceries on the floor of the patrol car that dropped him off, and would not be getting it back. So instead of catching a similar lift straight to his doorstep, he opted to just walk the _whole_ way home himself, for the sake of some much needed alone time and a trip to the supermarket along the way.

There were a few benefits, surprisingly. He was able to afford a much more nutritious and exciting variety of dinner ingredients than a single green onion and a six pack of eggs, for one. And before he had to put to the test just how strictly the “no shoes” part of that pesky universal “no shirt no shoes no service” policy is enforced, he was able to find his poor old abandoned boot by doing some backtracking. It’s been run over a good number of times and looks pretty significantly worse for wear, but it’s still in one piece, and it still fits on his foot.

The rest of the trip was a mercilessly tiresome slog, though. And now, as he’s sliding the front door ajar, it has been a good four or five hours since he left the house that afternoon for “just a bit”.

Before he can groan an exhausted “I’m home” to whoever’s still willing to entertain it, he’s met with the sight of Kagura clawing her way along the floor towards his spot in the foyer. She’s intentionally hollowing her whole face like that one freaky European painting of some guy screaming.

“Gin-chan,” she rasps, with such an affectation that it could not be literally anything except for a very cheesy and over-the-top act. “How could you? How could you leave me to starve like that? I _trusted_ you…”

“Welcome back, Gin-san!” Shinpachi pops his head around the corner to greet him with a modest smile. “We already ate, despite what Kagura-chan would have you believe.” 

Kagura clicks her teeth down there on the floor. 

“We saved you some rice, and I think there’s still a little bit of the boiled tofu I brought over from the dojo.”

“There’s not,” Kagura says, abandoning her ruse to slide around on her belly simply for the fun of it now.

“Just rice then,” Shinpachi shrugs, and ducks back into the office.

“So you two already ate, huh,” Gintoki ponders aloud and at length, stepping out of his battered footwear and over the top of Kagura’s wiggling form. 

He strides with dazzling confidence in his gait further indoors, hefting his downright stuffed bag of groceries proudly into the air for all to look upon.

“Then I guess I get to have _aaaaallllllll this_ for myself, tonight. How wonderfully lucky for me!”

Not _all_ of it is for dinner, in reality- he picked up a number of staple items too, while he was already out shopping. A footnote like that would ruin the spectacle, though.

Shinpachi adjusts his glasses, like they could be playing a trick on him. His eyebrows are scrunched inwards a little bit, but the rest of his expression betrays his general state of awe.

“Who did you steal that from?” he asks. He’s already taken a step closer, though.

“Be quiet, Shinpachi,” Kagura advises, while Gintoki graciously permits her to take a look into the bag and behold its wonders. “It’s legally our property once we’ve chewed and swallowed it.”

“I’m wounded! You two _wound_ me,” he crows, with an overdramatic stagger and toss of his head. “This bounty was acquired _fully_ within legal means, through the exchange of currency. Poor Gin-san will never recover from this devastating blow to his honour. You’ve killed me. I’m dying, now, and it’s all your fault. Oh, how wretched a fate!”

“You’re not gonna distract me that easily, you ham,” Shinpachi scowls, crossing his arms. “ _What_ currency?”

“Why, this currency right here, of course,” Gintoki grins, pulling his fresh envelope of bills out from between his shirt and kimono to waggle it persuasively.

Shinpachi’s brow relaxes with the rest of his face into a serene picture of resignation.

“I should’ve known it would come to purse snatching at this rate,” he sighs.

“Don’t make me repeat myself, Four Eyes,” Kagura scolds, while making a grab for the envelope. Gintoki lifts it out of her reach. “It’s legally ours after chewing and swallowing.”

“What _is_ it with you two, I swear!” Gintoki pouts, and it’s not entirely a part of his performance. “What does it say about you, that you’re willing to accuse me of theft before you consider that I got a _job_?”

“I think it’s more a question of what that says about _you_ ,” Shinpachi comments, unfairly.

“Oh, I see! Well if you’re that convinced that none of what I’ve got here was acquired by purely legitimate means, which it _was_ , then surely you’re not interested in eating any of it. Right, Kagura-cha-- _AAH!”_

The little twerp is already half done with the snack sized carton of strawberry milk that he bought as a private treat for _himself_. Gintoki starts to protest, but her words of ownership based on chewing and/or swallowing are still too fresh for him to have any chance of making a point.

“Where’d you manage to find work on such short notice?” Shinpachi asks, seemingly out of genuine delighted curiosity now, instead of in an effort towards character assassination. “We’ve been checking with all the usual places pretty much nonstop, right? If just an evening at this new joint pays _that much_ , then Kagura-chan and I should join up too!”

Gintoki’s heart plunges, at the thought of the conversation the three of them are gonna have later on that very subject. He smiles through it easily, and waves it off for now with an “I’ll tell you more about it after eating.”

He takes his bag of wonders over to the kitchen, where he can defend it better from Kagura’s pillaging, and gets to work. 

There’s still a serving or so of rice left over, like Shinpachi told him, but he needs the cooker for a new batch so he easily pawns it off into Kagura’s waiting maw. He catches her trying to shuffle away with more ingredients while he’s rinsing the grains, and from that point onwards she is officially under exile. He throws a packet of sukonbu over his shoulder into the sitting area to make sure the message sticks.

For his own big fluffy part, Sadaharu has been contentedly napping near the window ever since Gintoki got home. But the second he starts to unpackage the luxurious amount of chicken breast he swiped on sale from its proximity to the best before date, the slavering mooch is _all_ wagging tail and puppy eyes in his personal space, thankfully too awkwardly sized to fit all the way into the kitchen and pose a real threat like his owner does. Predictably, he loses interest when the vegetables come out.

Cooking is something Gintoki is very rarely able to appreciate for the act in itself. He doesn’t have much more than a practical interest in developing his skills, and it’s really just a means to an end that takes a frustrating amount of time compared to how quickly the results disappear. Tonight, though, following the utterly draining rigamarole both the Shinsengumi’s rank and file and its very toppest dogs subjected him to- it feels _damn good_ to just do his own thing for a bit in relative peace and quiet.

Happily, the food turns out really nicely, if he would dare say so himself. It looks good, it smells good, and the tastes he snuck while just stirring and waiting were good too. Not by any means the _perfect_ three servings of oyakodon- the egg base is a bit on the solid, well-done side. And maybe the steamed broccoli is sorta mushy. But neither of his young employees complain when he tells them to come n’ get it already.

Gintoki amends his judgment from “decent” to “heavenly” after his first bite. The taste itself is irrelevant- it’s the mere texture of sauce-drenched pan fried chicken in his mouth that causes such euphoria he’s nearly brought to tears. This, alone, is worth whatever hellishly awkward future awaits him en route to his work in a day’s time.

Despite the fact that this is their second course for the evening, the kids are just shoveling their food right down the hatch. Plain rice with tofu sounds like a pretty meagre and boring dinner, and Gintoki’s none too broken up about missing it.

Kagura treats all meals the exact same regardless of price or complexity, and now wears largely the same expression she always does while eating- one of blank fulfilment. He wasn’t expecting her to compliment the masterful subtleties of the dish, or anything. Shinpachi, for his part though, looks downright moved to the brink of melodrama by what he’s eating. Even on Otae’s decent salary, Gintoki doubts he’s been dining much better than Yorozuya Gin-chan’s two live-in employees lately. Most of the money’s gotta go towards keeping that huge plot of land they’ve got, and big sis probably gets fed at work most nights.

His decision to make some good old comfort food has clearly been a smashing success- too _much_ of one, in fact. They’re all done in a matter of minutes. The pressure Gintoki feels to tell the evening’s story is starting to loom in the very atmosphere of the sitting area before anyone’s even started to collect their dirty dishes, and, as expected, he is _not_ remotely ready or willing to take the plunge yet.

Thankfully, he prepared for this. There’s still a bit more buttering up he can squeeze in before it all goes right to hell.

“Well, it’s not really anything special,” he prefaces, while he gathers up everyone’s used dinnerware. “But if one of you wants to put on some tea, I did pick up a little dessert while I was out too.”

“Is it cake?” Kagura demands, without missing a beat, while Shinpachi’s eyebrows are still rising into his bangs. “Pattsan, quit your daydreaming and get out our finest Darjeerling.”

“It’s not cake,” Gintoki calls from the kitchen, at the same time that Shinpachi says with a laugh, “We don’t _have_ any Darjeerling, fine or otherwise.”

“You both do nothing but disappoint me,” Kagura grumbles, crossing her arms.

Dessert really _isn’t_ anything special- it’s downright pedestrian. It’s two boxes of factory made walnut mochi, completely incomparable to the freshly kneaded kind you can get at a dedicated sweets shop. Gintoki laments, as he distributes a few on to each of the small plates he’s withdrawn from the cupboard and tries to make them look fancy, that he should’ve sprung for a cake. It’s not like money is an issue anymore, and going over budget this once would have been worth it if he could make this gesture really _count_ in the first place.

But he was tired and grouchy on the way back home, and wouldn’t have wanted to go to a bakery after already stopping at the grocery store, and it’s too late for regret at this point anyways.

While he’s still in the kitchen, he puts away the rest of the non-perishables in their respective homes, and lets himself absorb the satisfaction of not having nothing in most of the food storage areas anymore. Life’s about the simple pleasures.

While Shinpachi’s taking the electric kettle off its base and setting up the teapot, he catches Gintoki’s eye as he makes his way back to the couches with his trio of dessert plates balanced between his fingers.

“So, spill it already- how did you luck out _this much_ today? What kind of work is it? It has to be something highly specialized, for that kind of pay.”

Aaaahhhhh, fuck. He was hoping for them to at least get a couple bites in, before it came to this. He hasn’t even put down the plates yet.

Shinpachi is still eagerly grilling him, so at least he doesn’t have to say anything _just_ yet.

“If you had to fake some kind of trade diploma to get an in, then, well… Morally, I obviously don’t agree with that, but if the employer was ignorant enough to fall for it, then I guess it’s sort of on their shoulders too, isn’t it?”

“Gin-chan,” Kagura interjects at her first opportunity. “I’ve been thinking this since I saw how much paper you were waving around, but…” She frowns. “You’re not selling your body to nasty old perverts now, are you?”

Shinpachi whips his head in her direction so fast he almost spills boiling water into his lap, mouth open around the start of some loud admonishment, but Gintoki can’t help the few bitter laughs already tumbling out of his own.

So worldly, this kid. He never stood a chance of trying to lie about it.

“You know,” he chuckles in self deprecation, throwing a whole gluey, overly flour-coated walnut wad into his mouth. “That’s not actually too far from the truth.”

Eh, it doesn’t taste _as_ disappointing as he was expecting, but it still barely qualifies as “good”.

The kids are both staring at him slackjawed with something approaching horror on their faces.

“Not like _that_ , for crying out loud!! When you make something you have fun with into your damn job, it just gets totally ruined. _There’s_ your life lesson for the day.”

It’s taking Gintoki a longer time to chew than he expected. The texture of these things isn’t too inauthentic, at least.

“Besides, I do have _some_ standards. Never mind what you two clueless little virgins may think about me.”

“Gin-san,” Shinpachi reproaches him with a grave expression, while he begins to pour out the tea. “Please don’t even joke about that sort of thing. The thought of you feeling the need to endanger yourself in such a way isn’t funny at all.”

“Yeah,” Kagura chips in, still frowning deeply. “Save the risk of venereal disease for your own rotten personal life.”

Gintoki washes the rest of his mouthful down with a sip of generic department store brand sencha that’s still slightly too hot for drinking. He feels the inside of his mouth starting to scald, while he sighs deeply from his nose. He screwed up- they’re already mad at him now, and he hasn’t even dropped the bomb yet. Goddamn it.

“Your vocabulary is only advanced in the most twisted ways, you know that?” he jibes at Kagura, in a weak attempt to lighten the mood.

“What do you expect, when a sweet little thing like me is forced to be around such a twisted adult all the time?” She gives a wide shrug, and Gintoki is able to deem his gambit partially successful.

“Please just tell us what this job is already,” Shinpachi urges over the rim of his cup. “It’s obviously something dangerous, isn’t it.”

“Probably, yeah,” Gintoki admits, while he blows impatiently at the thick steam  
rising off his tea. “Won’t know for sure until I actually get there, but there’s no way I’m not walking into some kinda big setup.”

“Why did you agree to it then,” Kagura scowls at him. “It reflects badly on your coworkers if you’re willing to let yourself get duped so easily, you know.”

“Gin-san can handle it, don’t you worry your dumpy little head about _that,_ ” Gintoki argues with a thin smile. “Besides- when it all goes off without a hitch, there’s lots more where this came from.” He pats his chest where the envelope is nestled between his clothes.

“I don’t like the way you’re talking about this,” Shinpachi frowns. Gintoki’s heart plunges into his stomach- here it comes, huh. “How can we help you if you won’t give us any concrete details? Don’t think we haven’t noticed how vague you’re being about everything!”

Yeah. Here it is. The big moment of truth.

He takes a long, deep breath, steels himself, and says it:

“You’re not helping. Neither of you are getting involved in this.”

“Bullshit,” Kagura growls, and fixes him with her most intimidating glare.

Shinpachi looks equal parts pissed off and unsatisfied, and twice the combined amount of those, he looks _hurt_. It’s hard to meet him eye to eye. But it’s the least Gintoki owes to do that, so he sucks it up.

“Why not?” Shinpachi asks, at a low and quiet register that is teeming with betrayed anger.

“The whole thing’s classified or some shit, so I can’t get too far into that,” Gintoki reasons, just like he’s gone over in his head. “But it might end up having some real nasty scumbags wrapped up in it. People who wouldn’t blink before killing a pair of kids in cold blood.”

People who already tried on two separate occasions to do just that, to these specific ones.

“So we’re just supposed to sit back and let them kill _you_ instead?!” Shinpachi’s voice cracks and he slams his untouched cup of tea down on to the coffee table.

“That’s not gonna happen,” Gintoki states calmly and dispassionately.

“It already almost did!!!” Kagura hollers, and nearly puts her fist straight through the couch cushion. “Or have you gone senile already, you shaggy piece of crap?! That freak Nizou almost cut you right in half! If Shinpachi hadn’t been there- If _I_ had been there, too, you would never have gotten screwed up so bad! So quit just talking out your asshole!!”

Her eyes are looking moister by the second, and Shinpachi is staring straight down into his own lap with tense shoulders and balled fists. The inside of Gintoki’s mouth is sour and dry.

“This isn’t a discussion,” he says, and hates every syllable as it passes through his lips. “I’m leaving town the day after tomorrow, and you’re both taking Sadaharu to stay with Otae until I get back. End of story.”

Kagura picks up a piece of walnut mochi off her plate, surges to her feet, and hurtles it dead eye into the middle of Gintoki’s forehead. It almost knocks him straight over the back of the couch. While he’s coming down from the vision-whitening shock of the hit into a more focused pinpoint sort of ache, he hears some stomping footsteps leaving the office, then shortly the noise of his bedroom door being torn nearly off its hinges and slammed shut again.

He’s made quite the number of people slam some doors today, hasn’t he.

Frankly, it feels like shit at this point.

With a few muttered curses, he massages his forehead for a little while. The mochi bounced right off, like it was a rubber shotgun slug. It’d be kinda funny if it wound up stuck to the ceiling at least, but that’s probably not the case, knowing his luck.

When Gintoki wipes a stray pained tear from his eye and looks across the coffee table again, Shinpachi is still sat where he was before, hunched in on himself with shaky rigor in his shoulders. He looks small, and young.

“I-” he swallows, takes a deep breath, and doesn’t look up. “I know that I-- I’m still weak. I’m too weak to do anything useful at all, on this kind of job.”

 _You’re not_ , Gintoki desperately wants to say. Because he isn’t.

But he can’t say it.

“That’s why you need to just stay safe for now,” he answers. Lies. Utter fabrication.

Pointlessly cruel.

Disgusting, really.

“Yeah,” Shinpachi says, scrubbing vigorously at one of his eyes underneath his glasses. He sniffles loudly, and rises to his feet. “Sorry.” His voice breaks, and he turns smoothly to walk to the bathroom with what composure he has left to spare.

When he hears the door tap neatly and politely shut, Gintoki slumps fully into the back of the couch and rests his neck on the top of the cushion. No mochi on the ceiling, just like he thought.

It went just about how he expected. Almost down to the letter, actually.

And knowing he was right doesn’t feel good at all.

He knew at least one of them would bring up that whole fucking mess with the Kiheitai. And that they’d be totally correct about it. Of _course_ they would- he didn’t forget. The scars have only recently finished forming, after all. He’d be in at least two separate pieces right now if it weren’t for that pair of meddling, stubborn, ridiculously brave young teenagers.

That whole situation was different from the current one. Nobody had a damn clue what was happening until it was far too late, and then it was just this disjointed series of goddamn miraculously lucky breaks all the way through to the end. It was one disaster after another, and all that anybody could do was frantically try to adapt.

The two of them adapted better than Gintoki ever has to anything in his whole wretched ugly life. They were quick, and resourceful, and completely steadfast in the face of overwhelming mortal danger. And through their own skill and hardiness, they made it out the other side no worse for wear than slightly dirty and bruised. Smiles on both their faces, as they helped him limping and bleeding all the way back home.

He’s got no doubt for half a second that they’d be just as great, face to face with whatever hidden threat is waiting a few days’ journey on foot down the back road out of Edo. They’d meet it head on with that same earnest spirit and grace, and together all of them would see the thing through like they always do.

But Gintoki is selfish, and he’s a coward.

He’d rather these two amazing kids he’s lucky enough to have ever met in the first place stay somewhere miles out of the way from any real danger, sad and angry and bored, than see them grinning ear to ear while they throw themselves between him and some other hardened killer’s weapon.

It’s far, far easier to let himself be hated than it is to watch anybody swing a sword at the two best things that have ever happened to him.

Gintoki gets to his feet, and starts putting away all the largely untouched dessert still on the table. If anybody wants it later, they should be able to figure out they’ve just gotta check the boxes in the fridge. Mochi is definitely the sort of thing that could screw up a dog’s digestive tract, and he’s got no clue if walnuts are a death sentence or not but he’d rather not take that sort of risk. And Sadaharu has already shown up to sniff with some interest at all the leftover food.

“At least you’ve got no hard feelings towards me, you big furry poop machine.”

Sadaharu is a dog who is incapable of human speech, so it’s impossible to know concretely whether that’s true or not. But the bizarrely cute little bark that comes out of his gigantic toothy mouth is, at least in the moment, reassuring. In just a pointless little way.

It’s not very late yet and he’s not particularly sleepy, but after he’s dealt with the leftovers, Gintoki resigns himself to falling asleep out here in the office with the TV turned on. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult, to stay up a few more hours until the general time that Otae finishes work and gets home, or even to walk over to the telephone right this second and leave a message. But he’s already decided that call can wait until tomorrow.

He’s already sick right to death of hearing himself talk tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter ends on sort of... a huge bummer. but i promise the mood is gonna brighten right up, and real soon. and i assure you, shinpachi and kagura are certainly not going to just obediently sit on the sidelines ;-)


	4. Absence makes the heart forgetful and prone to dramatization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gintoki makes a phone call, and has a pretty crummy day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think it's safe to say the update schedule will be a bit slower from now on- i don't have _such_ an exhaustivley planned timeline for the next little bit of the story.
> 
> i wanted this chapter to be the great Hour of Departure, but naturally i've taken every opportunity so far to write more than i probably strictly need to, so i've had to push that back until next time. chapter five is where it all really starts for real, promise!!
> 
> this one wound up being mostly housekeeping, but hopefully it's not too mind-numbing lol.
> 
> to answer a question- i don't really use social media apart from my private twitter where i mostly just chat with my friends, so there's not much of a place to follow me online. sorry!!
> 
> thank you though, as always, for the lovely comments! they always brighten my day <3

Predictably, Gintoki has a difficult time trying to fall asleep once he’s turned off the lights and settled under his too-small throw blanket. He guesses the hour at around ten after he’s set up camp on one of the couches, stripped down to his boxers and shirt without access to the pajamas folded up in the recently captured territory of his usual sleeping space.

Shinpachi snuck wordlessly out the front door after regaining himself a bit, and Gintoki pretended for both their sakes that he didn’t notice. It’s been quiet over in the bedroom where Kagura took fort, which tells him that at least his things will be in one piece tomorrow, but that’s a pretty hollow comfort. Sadaharu is back in his warm weather bedtime haunt, under the window behind the desk at the rear of the office.

So it’s just him and his thoughts.

He finds them wandering, right off the bat, directly to Hijikata. Gintoki feels itchy and tense on the whole inside of his chest as he realizes what’s happening, and then, overall, comes the pall of total annoyance.

He just lets himself succumb to it without a fight, though.

(That’s also annoying.)

He hadn’t even realized, until right this moment, that today was the very first time in contact with the guy ever since that morning on the rooftop. Not even both ways- the _actual_ last time they’d looked each other in the eye was the night before that, when Gintoki rode up beside the car Hijikata had his sword stuck in, and tossed him a bag of extra spicy rice crackers.

Not much of an interaction, that.

But he wasn’t there for his own sake back then. Just doing one last job, an important one, for a new friend about to be an old friend.

Remembering the sound of snack foil crinkling against Hijikata’s chest over by the rooftop’s guard rail, he’s able to feel like he safely delivered the message.

The big jerk was pretty badly banged up, wasn’t he? Gintoki definitely recalls hearing a crutch tapping up the stairwell at his back. And peering up through the raindrops on his riding goggles some hours before that, he’d seen several thick dark trails of blood streaming down from Hijikata’s hairline and shoulder along with all the storm water.

… He’s in pretty remarkably good shape now, considering the physical state he was in less than a month ago. There’s no way in hell that bum leg of his is totally back to normal though. Gintoki is starting to get a bad feeling about what several days of uninterrupted walking is gonna do to it.

Well, he knows from plenty of experience that it’s definitely _possible_ to just keep on moving when you’ve got an injury like that, sure. But the will to put up with it tends to expire the second you’ve gotten to where you’re going. If he’s already a man down on arrival, this job is gonna be twice the kick in the nuts.

Or maybe, Gintoki thinks, with growing dread, it’ll only be a kick in one nut.

“Subtlety” is the last thing in the entire freaking universe he would ever associate with the _famously_ aggressive Oni Vice Chief. His entire claim to recognition comes from the way he quickly and brutally ends violent conflict, with that unflinching drive towards victory he’s probably had since birth. Oh, sure, Gintoki’s got no doubt that he’s concocted all sorts of clever guerilla tactics- _another_ thing he’s famous for is that sharp strategic mind of his, after all. But the way he solves the vast majority of the problems he encounters, whether right off the bat or after some tricky maneuvering, is to charge straight at it with his sword drawn. Hell, Gintoki was briefly one of those problems himself for some reason, once upon a time.

Never even mind Hijikata’s typical approach to issue resolution, though. Just throw that right out the window. 

He is _the_ worst liar that Gintoki has ever met in his entire life. And he has met enough bad liars to fill up the whole Terminal top to bottom.

The extent to which every single one of Hijikata’s emotions is pinned, sewn, and embellished with colourful accents on his sleeve- it’s straight up painful to watch sometimes. He’s so transparent you can see your hand on the other side of him.

Qualities that Gintoki really likes, in a person. In general, it’s so rare to find an adult as straightforward and honest, in that line of work to boot, that you could easily go your entire life without the opportunity. More personally: it’s fun. It’s so easy to get this guy’s goat, in such differing, specific ways, that he can never help himself from prodding and needling just to see what kind of genuine reactions he’ll see. They’re always predictable, but they’re always entertaining.

In the terms of an undercover investigation, though… That admirable nature of his couldn’t be a worse handicap. Has he ever even _gone_ undercover?? The guy seems to delegate all the sneaky stuff to poor little Jimmy-kun. Gintoki is totally incapable of imagining Mr. Hack And Slash having the patience or the guile to dedicate himself to the kind of long con they could be in for.

Either way, he is starting to really stare down the possibility of having to carry both their weights. Whether he’ll have to do it literally on his own back, or figuratively under embarrassed social fumbling, it already looks kind of inevitable.

If given the choice, he’d rather put up with a long and hard cardio workout than the stress of endlessly covering up for a really clumsy fibber.

Worrying himself in circles about all the ifs ands or buts, Gintoki isn’t mentally inactive enough to sleep for a long time. He blearily cracks his eyes open at, judging by the dark shapes on the wall clock, around twelve-thirty having realized he’d nodded off. And from there he’s plagued by that horrible sticky feeling on the inside of his head that normally comes from a badly timed afternoon nap.

He wakes up like that again at three, then at a little bit before seven, and then it finally takes at eleven-ish.

There’s nobody but him in the office.

It feels miserable, just like it should.

Naturally there’s no breakfast waiting for him either, because he does not especially deserve the gesture. But Sadaharu _did_ find the piece of mochi that Kagura tried to concuss him with, eat it, and then throw it back up on the hardwood mostly in one piece within the little clear pool of bile sinking into the cracks between the floorboards.

The pooch himself is sat patiently in front of his food dish, right as rain, radiating more passive aggression than Gintoki can remember ever receiving from a dog.

Since Sadaharu has already proven how good he is at his “wait” trick, the mess becomes the first order of business. It’s thankfully all room temperature instead of hot and fresh, through the handful of toilet paper used for the process. The texture is still enough to put Gintoki off the thought of making breakfast for a while longer, though.

So the mutt gets his breakfast first. He’s still just been staring across the room, with a small part of the whites of his eyes showing, making a disturbingly human sort of annoyed face. The XXXL economy bag of dog food they buy on sale has dwindled down to about the weight of a regular-sized Akita, Gintoki notices as he hefts it up on to his hip. He reminds himself to get some more when he’s hit the shopping part of his preparations today.

Aah… there’s not enough time to actually get it patched up in the middle of everything else, but it’s starting to seem like a good idea just to walk the scooter around with him so it can act as a pack mule.

It’s easier when the brats tag along, and he’s got an extra two pairs of arms.

Well… that bridge is burned right to a crisp for the time being, at least. Maybe they’ll be more interested in rebuilding it once this is all over and done with. Or maybe they’ll be even more upset with him, after however long without any contact. Whatever radio setup he’ll have to work with certainly won’t be optimal for making personal calls.

Gintoki resolves firmly, as he finishes troughing out Sadaharu’s meal, to stop feeling sorry for himself. He puts the dog food back away and gives a light motivating little smack to his own cheek. There’s a ton of shit he’s gotta get done today, and the moping can wait till he’s already on the road.

He made his choice, and whether or not he already deeply regrets it doesn’t matter.

In a downright out-of-character spur of ambition, Gintoki decides to go two for two and get the other task that’s been haunting him out of the way early.

After sitting at his desk and fingering the rotary dial, it takes about forty seconds for him to realize that he just straight up does not remember the number he needs. And then it’s a good five minutes more of digging through the drawers to find that damn phone book.

The phone on the other end rings and rings and rings, but nobody answers, and it switches to voicemail. Gintoki hangs up before he’s asked to leave a message at the beep- he didn’t prepare for having to say his entire friggin’ piece all at once.

Although, maybe he’s not completely shit out of luck here. He seems to recall the person in question having a mobile phone, so maybe he was prescient enough in the past to have taken the number down.

It’s pointedly not recorded anywhere in the address book’s actual pages, but just when he’s hit the brink of frustration, he notices the haphazard collection of differently-sized scrap papers tucked behind the front cover. And behold! Glorious success.

The call connects quickly, with an immediate buzz of activity in the background. It’s barely morning anymore, so maybe she’s out for a bit of leisure time before work.

“Hello? It’s quite rare to get a call from you, Gin-san. Especially at this number.”

What the…?!

Oh.

“Wow, so you’ve got caller ID huh? Fancy, fancy.”

“Perhaps to someone as pointlessly behind the times as you,” Otae swerves right under his guard to hit him in the jaw with. Jeez. It sure runs in the family.

“Uncalled for,” he pouts. “But I’ll let it slide just the once.”

Now for the hard part… aaaaarrgghh.

“Actually,” Gintoki starts. It’s safe, but not very useful, and he finds himself stuck again. He sighs away from the mouthpiece. “Nevermind. Sorry, uh, in advance, but--”

“Wait a moment, please.” Otae swiftly puts him out of his misery. “If _you’re_ apologizing for something, I feel like the world must be ending. Give me some time to find shelter.”

Seriously… every single one of these punks. Too goddamn sharp for their own good.

She’s got a point, though. The hell is he doing, acting all meek and discouraged. Buck up, Gintoki! Get it together, Gintoki!

“Look, no need to go out of your way, there ain’t any meteor showers in the afternoon forecast. I’ve just got a bit of a favour I need to--”

Before he has any idea what’s happening, Kagura has stomped out of the bedroom on a warpath and slapped the phone’s receiver with the side of her hand, ending the call. She’s staring right up at him, her bearing full of the same righteous anger from the night before.

He finds himself totally cowed by it, and is quickly the first to break eye contact.

“The heck…” he mutters, not knowing what to do with his hands. “If you were already up, why’d I have to be the one to feed the dog. Whatever happened to that passionate ‘I’ll take care of him all by myself’?”

She says nothing, but Gintoki still feels the wrath of her gaze on him. So it’s gonna be the silent treatment, is it. He definitely had this pegged as a possibility. 

In practice… well, it just kinda sucks.

Like most everything else that makes him  
feel rotten, he ignores it.

He gets halfway through re-dialing Otae’s cell phone when Kagura smacks the receiver again, and it becomes clear then that this is going to be an Issue. In the ensuing scramble he’s able to connect the call two or three more times, by holding the base of the phone above his own head, but woe betide any who would underestimate a Yato clansman’s vertical jump. The way it ends is with Kagura pulling the plug out of the wall, and crushing the end of it like a bug in the palm of her hand.

Mission accomplished, she skips off in her pajamas to turn on the TV. She simply shoves Gintoki’s pile of clothes from yesterday on to the floor, and sits to enjoy her chosen daytime drama program.

Well… that’s that, then.

With no other choice but to take it easy for the moment, Gintoki busies himself brushing his teeth, judging by touch if he needs a shave, determining that he does not, getting into a fresh pair of boxers, the works. His chosen garb is surely a bit wrinkled now from cruel mistreatment, but it’s still clean. He’ll grab it and give it all a good shake after he’s done putting on the rice.

As he’s finishing up the penultimate task of eyeballing the amount of soaking water to go in the basin, he clears his throat.  
Puts on his best stage volume.

“I’m just talking to myself, here, so it’s up to anyone who could potentially overhear this to do what they want with it- _but!_ In thirty minutes from now, at the absolute earliest, all that one would have to do for a big old helping of starch for their breakfast and or lunch, is push this handy little “cook” button over here and wait.”

Kagura does not flinch or avert her focus from the television, but she’s far too close nearby to have missed any of that.

“I _also_ seem to recall,” Gintoki continues, throwing his voice, “that I taught somebody, not anyone in particular though, how to make a basic salad dressing, if that nobody in particular wanted, say, some shredded vegetables for a snack or something later on. Juuuuuusssssst talking to myself right now, though.”

He writes down the recipe on some scrap paper anyways, and tapes it to the door of the fridge at about eye level to a fourteen-year-old.

Well, she’ll almost definitely go for everything else in there _before_ the carrots, but it’s worth a shot at least. He’s not set a great example himself, but neither of them have eaten very many veggies lately. Gintoki feels like he’s probably been on the brink of scurvy at least once in the past few months.

It’s… awkward, as absolute fuckin’ hell, but he finds himself shuffling silently on his hands and knees towards the back of the couch. He approaches only to the most distant possible point, stretches out his arm, and hooks a finger into the rumpled pile of clothing probably well within Kagura’s kicking range. It slides back home swiftly across the smooth floor, and Gintoki makes a hasty backwards retreat with his prize.

He was legitimately worried for a while that she was going to try and keep him hostage at home, after what happened to the telephone. If that were really the case though, he supposes she could have easily just knocked him out and tied him up in the closet.

It’s already almost noon now and daylight’s burning fast, so Gintoki dresses himself in a rush without too much effort spent in the interest of smoothing all the wrinkles. Everyone is always telling him he looks like a slob anyways, so he doubts it will make much of a difference.

He isn’t stopped by anything concrete on the way to the front door, but as he’s stood there with his fingers in the handle… There’s this urge, a flighty and almost kind of desperate one, to say… something.

He’s got no idea what. But he feels like he just _wants_ to say it, this something. A “see ya later”, maybe?

In the end, he reasons that it won’t get an answer anyways, so he just leaves.

Before Gintoki starts making his way into town proper, decrepit scooter bumping along at his side like a donkey on the verge of death, he stops at the nearest phone booth. After struggling to put the numbers in so many times, he at least clearly remembers all the digits of Otae’s cell phone number.

She lets the call wait for a few rings, and upon picking up is understandably a little miffed.

“Gin-san,” she greets slowly and pleasantly, in her best hostess tone of voice. She didn’t even check the number this time. “If this is another prank call, I am going to track your current location and pull out every one of your individual nose hairs with an industrial bolt cutter.”

Right through to the end of her threat, her voice is as sweet and bubbly as a flute of Dom Pérignon. Gintoki’s got chills all the way up and down his spine.

“It’s not!!! I mean, neither were the rest of those earlier, seriously, I swear! Cross my heart, swallow some needles, the whole deal. There were just, like, issues with the phone. I had to go find a different one.”

“That remains to be seen,” Otae kindly reminds him, and he can _feel_ the kind of smile she’s making on the other end of the line. “If there is actually any point to the way you’ve been disturbing my attempt to have a nice afternoon to myself, I would _love_ to hear it.”

“Got it. Cut right to the chase then, I got it. I’m sorry. I’ll be quick. Promise.”

She doesn’t get on his case for apologizing this time. A good sign- if Otae becomes legitimately angry at him he is well and truly fucked out of options.

“Cutting to the chase, then: I need kind of a big favour.”

“I’m not lending you any money,” is her instant reply.

Is there _anyone_ who isn’t blatantly disillusioned with him, today?!

“Hmph! You probably won’t believe me, but it’s actually kind of the opposite of the situation you’re imagining right now. I’ve got a big job lined up, and I’m out of town for who knows how long starting tomorrow morning. D’you think you can make some room for a couple brats and a dog, at that big empty dojo of yours?”

There’s a long, poignant silence that follows, and Gintoki is starting to think for sure that he’s been barking up the wrong tree since the very start. The response he finally gets is surprising.

“I see,” Otae says simply, with a short sigh. “I thought for sure you and Shin-chan had an awful fight, the way he looked when I got home yesterday. He spent the whole morning in bed, too. I was ready to pulverize you on sight today.”

Even secondhand, hearing about Shinpachi’s gloom puts a vice to Gintoki’s chest. There _had_ to be a better way to say what he did. Tell the lie that he did.

“Past tense?” he asks, gritting through the kind of emotional nausea starting to take root in him.

“Luckily for you,” Otae confirms, rather without humour. “Mark this on your calendar and celebrate it, if you want: I happen to agree with your decision.”

Gintoki considers that the blow to the head he took last night might have been much more serious than he thought.

“Um… pardon? I’m not experiencing some kind of auditory hallucination right now, am I? Tae-san?”

She ignores the minor health crisis he is beginning to undergo, and drives straight for the point. “I’m relieved to hear that you’re actually being responsible about these things, for once. What little you’ve told me about this job of yours is so shady I don’t even know where to start.”

“Yeah,” Gintoki laughs helplessly. “You’re not wrong.”

“Do Shin-chan and Kagura-chan know any more about it than me?”

“No, pretty much not. Mum’s the word for this thing.”

“Good.”

It’s just a single word. But the heavy, careworn relief emanating from it makes Gintoki disturbed to remember that the young lady it’s just come from is barely any older than the little brother she’s been forced by circumstance to care for like a parent.

It reminds him, jarringly, of Mitsuba.

It makes him glad, in a complicated and painful kind of way, that the man he imposed on for his whole childhood was at least of an age to have a few whelps of his own happily running around somewhere hypothetical.

(The one he wound up with instead was just an awful little goblin, who’s only gotten worse with age.)

The rest of the phone call covers the specifics of the arrangement. He’ll drop by later in the afternoon to slide a generous amount of packaged bills through the mail slot for whatever food expenses crop up during this big old sleepover, and however much Otae skims off the top for her trouble is fine. Gintoki has been promised that at least a little of the money will be funding her private ice cream stash, and he couldn’t think of a better use for it himself.

The afternoon from then on is as uneventful and monotonous as he could have hoped for. He stops at a corner store for his lighter provisions: a jam-packed plastic bag of absolute junk from every snack aisle, first and foremost. That gorilla’s promise of food supplies didn’t fill him with a fantastic amount of hope for the quality of his on-the-road dining experience. While he’s there, he also picks up a few creature comforts while he’s at it. Bug spray, a new toothbrush, a travel pack of toilet paper, some dry shampoo, et cetera. The things his already unmanageable hair does, when exposed to too much humidity and grease, does not bear looking upon. He definitely didn’t pay enough attention to those maps to have an idea if there will be any bathing opportunities along the way.

Ginoki’s next destination is a decent-sized specialty liquor shop, for the biggest and cheapest PET bottle of low quality vodka he can get his hands on. Whether its use will be as emergency disinfectant or a campfire ice breaker, it never hurts to be too prepared.

He’d forgotten he skipped breakfast until he’s halfway to the bulk department store for dog chow, so he makes a bit of a detour to a little crepe stand he hasn’t visited in a while. It’s a nutritious and filling meal- most major food groups are covered between the dairy in the whipped cream, the flour in the wrapping, and the king’s serving of jellied fruit. Someone snatches his bag of corner store goodies off the handle of his parked scooter while he’s paying and tries to run off with them, but it’s nothing an accurate vertical boomerang throw from trusty Lake Toya doesn’t immediately fix, and the black eye he bestows afterwards surely sends the point home.

The final leg of the afternoon is so boring Gintoki could just cry. Ninety-five percent of it is walking. Just walking. Him and his scooter, two feet, and two wheels running lower on air with every tiny bump in the road. It’s a sobering preview of what the next half a week is going to be like- for _some_ reason, he doesn’t picture Hijikata being up for any games of shiritori or magical banana.

Humans are supposed to be social creatures, damn it!!! 

Ah, right, though, of course: he won’t be traveling with a human. An oni, instead. His mistake.

… Those fellas are supposed to at least be up for a good time, though. Gintoki feels like whoever came up with Hijikata’s impressive nickname doesn’t actually know shit about folklore.

He just keeps on walking. Walking, and walking, and walking. He walks to the department store, where he walks to the pet aisles, then walks up to the cash lanes shaking and sweating his guts out from deadlifting all 60 kilos of dog food without a shopping cart because just _fuck_ it at this point. Then he walks back out to where he parked his useless goddamn broken and empty-tanked scooter, heaves his burden on to the seat, watches the whole carriage sink almost to the ground, and allows himself a few minutes to hunch into a squat to just keep sweating and feeling sore. Then he kicks up the stand, and starts to walk some _more_.

It’s definitely harder going, with the weight of a small adult in dry kibble testing his vehicle’s rickety frame- if he tried to sit on it now the whole thing would just fall apart. He can sense the repair bill climbing with every onerous squeak and creak and shudder. It takes longer, for _sure_ , to go back most of the way he came.

When he gets to the Shimura dojo’s main gate, he wishes it would have taken a little bit longer still. Gintoki doesn’t really have it in him to face any of the people who could potentially be in there.

So he just sticks to the plan- he dumps the bag of dog food under the mailbox, fishes his share out of the envelope tucked against his chest, and puts the remainder neatly through the slot. He leaves feeling nervous, like he just pulled some kind of mean-spirited prank.

The rest of the way back isn’t long, but the noises his scooter is making keep him on edge the whole time. It feels literally seconds from falling completely to pieces when he rolls it to a stop under the side awning of Snack Otose, and pulling out the kickstand takes all the precision of an explosives technician diffusing a bomb. If anyone so much as nudges the thing, he’s gonna hunt them down for the insurance like a hound out of hell.

It’s not much later than five, Gintoki guesses from a glance up at the sky. He made pretty decent time- which is for the best, considering how early his start will be tomorrow. Going out for five hour errand sprees two days in a row, now, has left him fuckin’ exhausted. No wonder he always drags this shit out. The alternative blows.

His back’s still aching from that stunt at the department store, he discovers as climbing the outdoor staircase puts strain on it that he didn’t expect. That was just foolish as hell. Why did he _do_ that.

After a fumble for the house keys, he steps over the threshold with his arms full of purchases and a sense of deja-vu he could completely do without.

“I’m hoooooooome,” Gintoki calls inside, with lackluster feeling.

Nobody else is, though.

There’s such a thick sense of stillness in the office that it’s almost physically difficult to move through. The TV’s off, but there are some used dishes on the coffee table. Someone (wonder who) brought the rice cooker over there too, and cleaned it out so thoroughly there’s not even a single dried up grain clinging to the side. There’s a note in there, though.

Gintoki picks it up and notices before anything else that it’s written on the back of his salad dressing memo from earlier in the day. Nice. Ecologically friendly.

The new message on it, in simple hiragana, reads:

_Going to stay with anego tonight but only cause it sucks here. Don’t call in a missing persons report, dickhead._

Yeah… there would be some tricky kanji near the end of that.

At least he can sleep in his own bedroom tonight, Gintoki thinks with a sigh. It’s not much of a comfort.

He doesn’t feel like doing the dishes, so he doesn’t. Unfortunately though, getting home doesn’t spell the end of his errands like it rightfully should. Feeling vaguely zombie-like he meanders around the house collecting things for the quickly approaching journey: clothes, a utility knife, some matches. Venturing to the closet in his room reveals that Kagura at least put away the futon sometime during the day, but he’s not as pleased by that as he should be.

When all’s said and done Gintoki has a pretty sizable bundle of luggage all wrapped up in his sturdiest traveling cloth. Hopefully the Shinsengumi portion of supplies won’t be too substantial- he’s got a hunch that it almost definitely won’t be, actually.

It’s hilariously early in the day for it, but he sort of wants to just take a bath and go to sleep. He’s not in the mood to make any dinner, so he fishes a bag of chips that was supposed to be for the trip out of his bundle, already fully surrendered to the idea or a geriatric bedtime.

Kagura’s right. It does suck here.


	5. It's actually a pretty physically impressive feat to fit your entire foot inside your mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's that old saying, again? "The mouth is the source of all calamity"?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaha! woo! heya folks! long time no see!
> 
> in all seriousness though i burnt myself out pretty quick there, posting 17k in like a week in a half, and the year's been pretty rough between then and now. i never gave up on this though, and though the update schedule almost definitely isn't gonna be as freakishly quick as it started, i'm committed to seeing this thing through no matter how long it might eventually take. if any of you are still waiting around for it- thank you!! i hope you enjoy the latest addition. it's a bit of a doozy ;-)

The “bright and early” part of Gintoki’s promise is not one hundred percent true- when his annoying piece of shit alarm clock starts to ring, it is still pitch black outside. Five thirty was the agreed upon meeting time, at the southernmost old exit from the city. The hour hand of the repurposed Justaway he just slapped over into the doorframe is still well near the territory of four o’ clock. 

Every atom in his body is pleading for him to just go back to sleep, and the toasty comforting pocket universe of the futon is a criminally seductive argument in favour. Gintoki rolls out of it and on to the tatami before his physical good sense wins out. 

Hijikata  _ will _ leave him behind if he’s late. And he’s already got enough kowtowing to get through as it is.

He didn’t think at all yesterday, in the end, about how to make his amends. Too busy dealing with the immediate aftermath of an entirely different and yet no less catastrophic fuckup. Might as well open a house tab for those, at this rate.

The floor is uncomfortable and cold, and still so very near enough to dreamland for it to be a pretty much useless buffer. Gotta get off the floor for now.

Gintoki tries getting off the floor.

It doesn’t really take.

Squeezing his eyes tighter shut, he nuzzles against the bamboo weave with an unhappy groan. Considers what the consequences will  _ actually _ be, if he just crawls back into the futon right now. It’s so close by he can still feel his own body heat clinging to it just a few centimetres away.

Consequences, right… consequences… 

Hijikata will be mad. 

So what, though? He’s already mad. Everyone’s mad. They’re still gonna be mad if he gets there on time, so what’s the point.

Gintoki kicks himself around in a half circle on the floor. All his exposed skin rubbing against the tatami feels absolutely horrible, and it rouses him a little bit but does nothing to make the process seem any more worthwhile.

He agreed to this. Why did he agree to this?

A question to keep pondering, as he paws open his bedroom door and rolls over the threshold on to the office’s hardwood. More comfortable but still cold. Cold’s probably good. Cold is a bit closer to awake.

Goddddddd there’s still  _ neon  _ lit up outside, from the fucking “massage” place a few blocks back behind the desk, bright bright pink. Gintoki can feel all the pink tunneling into his brain like a boring weevil. Weevils crawling all the fuck over his brain.

It’s morning, right? Morning? That time when the sun is up and the birds are chirping?

Since it’s obviously an Opposites Day, actually, everything’s fine. Yeah. Night is morning, nobody’s pissed off at him for perfectly good reasons, and once he’s up and out the front door everything is gonna be  _ perfect. _

Life’s great.

Taxis are reasonably priced- cheap, even!! So bloody cheap that Gintoki might still have a whole thirty percent of his entire advance left over. Happy goddamn day.

And it  _ is _ at least properly approaching “day” now, by this decrepit little roadside outpost. The sky’s a quiet and gentle kind of indigo colour- it’ll stay like that for at least another hour, at this time of the year. For the moment the air is nice and cool and quiet. With any luck whatsoever typhoon season is properly finished, as it well should be so far into autumn.

In the odd years since the Amanto got settled, this particular way out of Edo seems like it’s almost stopped seeing use altogether. The main road turned into a concrete highway, and appropriately all kinds of gas stations and tourist traps and snack shops and things popped up like weeds right along with it all the way out of the whole municipality. Supposedly, at least- it’s not like Gintoki watched it happen himself. But it’s easy to imagine how quick these kinds of old dirt-paved horse and cart trading paths turned obsolete with the advent of that trusty thing called motor transport.

Well, not completely though. Judging by the presence of some very old-looking street lamps (still on at this hour) and the general state of upkeep, even shabby as it is, this particular road here still gets some traffic maybe every few weeks or so. Just not enough for the- tea shop? Looks like that’s what it was, from the little outdoor bench- to bring in enough business to stay open.

A damn shame, that- because Gintoki is  _ damn _ hungry, having rolled around on the floor for too long before getting dressed and out the door to have eaten any breakfast. The chips he had twelve hours ago are long gone to the cruel process of digestion, and that absence has been starting to make itself keenly felt since about half way through the cab ride. Some tea and a plate of mitarashi dango sounds just about perfect.

Well, it’s not fresh, but there  _ is _ a bottle of the cold pre-brewed stuff sloshing around on his back somewhere… He’s probably got enough time for a brief picnic here by himself, considering he’s apparently early anyways.

(Annoying- how much more time could he have stayed comfy in bed, then?! Goddamn it!)

He takes a seat on that lonely little bench, all soggy and moss-covered, and not very structurally sound at all anymore considering the immediate creaky sag it gives. The slight damp from the morning condensation instantly seeps directly through the ass of Gintoki’s clothing. Great.

Naturally, then, when he’s only  _ just _ finished undoing all his work packing from the night before, with every individual item from his bundle unrolled and taken aside so he can extract whatever pathetic breakfast there is to be salvaged from nothing but convenience store junk food-  _ that’s _ when the unmistakable sound of car tires on unkept gravelly dirt rolls up in front of him. He doesn’t have a watch but it’s almost certainly right on time, too, and  _ he’s _ the asshole with his pants down here.

He’s too busy scrambling to get everything stuffed back into place, after making a rushed and instantly regrettable decision on some weirdly flavoured rice crackers he only bought out of curiosity, to pay much attention to whatever disembarkation process Hijikata completes. He still hears most of it, though: tires stop, door opens, feet on the ground, door closes, some more footsteps, trunk opens, trunk closes, tires start again. Efficient, professional, no nonsense. Oozing such crabby impatience that Gintoki is frankly shocked he hasn’t already gotten snapped at to hurry up.

Thump.

“There. Now move your ass.”

Ah… that’s more like it.

Dumped with a simple and brusque rudeness, a heavy-sounding nylon sack plunges into the top of Gintoki’s periphery while he finally slings his own luggage back over his shoulder. When he stands back up the seat of his hakama clings directly to his behind, not soaked  _ completely  _ through but certainly wet enough to have made a very chilly cloth film on the outside of his undergarments. It feels scratchy and gross and the early morning air breezes right through it like it’s a window screen. If he catches his death of ass-cold before they even get there he’s gonna be a very embarrassed ghost.

“I’m moving it, I’m moving it already-” he grumbles, shivering through the discomfort and scooping up the present Hijikata oh so very kindly left before immediately walking away without him. There’s definitely at least one big metal something in there, but fuck if he paid enough attention to Kondou back when they were going through all that boring crap about supplies to have any idea what it could be. He’s not especially curious enough to risk an even worse atmosphere by stopping to check.

With probably an extra thirty pounds criss crossed over his opposite shoulder too now, Gintoki’s back  _ already  _ aches a little after the quick jog he’s gotta complete to close the distance with his new… urgh… “partner”. There’s gotta be a better word for it. If he’s ever gotta say that shit out loud he might puke.

To his credit, Hijikata isn’t decked out head to toe in that flashy goddamn uniform of his like Gintoki half expected he would be, so he awards a tentative plus one for subtlety. He’s in the same exact plain navy blue kimono as he ever is off-duty, literally the only other piece of clothing Gintoki can actually remember seeing him in when he really puts his mind to it. Does the guy even own anything else? The coming days (uuugghhhh) on the road probably hold the answer, but Gintoki’s already got a hunch he knows what the extremely depressing reality of it is. Good thing he thought to bring along so many little bits and bobs for the disguise effort.

… Isn’t he cold, though, wearing only that and some zori? What the hell’s he gonna do if it  _ rains? _

For his own part Gintoki has proven both climate-conscious  _ and _ committed to the whole undercover schtick, with his positively normie peasant wear and haori. He does miss the feel of his favourite boots a little bit, but one of them  _ did  _ take a pretty rough beating in all the drama of two days past, and he at least is in possession of the common sense to put on some tabi when it’s like twelve degrees celcius out. Seriously, if Hijikata loses his toes to frostbite Gintoki’s gonna be pretty annoyed.

“Quit staring at me,” the (for now at least) owner of the toes in question barks into the wind, not deigning to turn his pissy little head in the direction of the guy he’s bitching at.

“Then quit walking directly in front of me, asshole.” Gintoki feels less and less like attempting that whole apology thing, the more the two of them converse like this.

Besides… where’s he even supposed to start. ‘Sorry that I forgot you’re in mourning and threw my shoe at your head’? Yeah, real fuckin’ natural. Sounds one hundred percent sincere, and not even slightly mean-spirited or sarcastic.

… Gintoki can’t see from this angle, but he wonders if that welt on Hijikata’s cheek has gotten any better. He probably hasn’t put any kind of soothing agent on it, has he.

Ah, yeah, there’s still a noticeable pink splotch on the side of that handsome face of his when he deems it worth the effort this time to peek over his shoulder and shoot a real nasty look.

“ _ You’re  _ gonna lead the way, then?”

And that’s when, with the resulting shift in his shoulders, Gintoki notices that the thing Hijikata’s (very small) sack of personal luggage is tied on to the middle of like it’s some common walking stick, is his whole ass metal longsword and scabbard.

Is-

Is this guy for real???

“ _ Hey, _ uuhhhh,” Gintoki  _ urgently  _ speeds his walking pace, to give Hijikata a real up close and personal piece of his mind. “ _ You _ may not realize this, getting to flaunt basically every frickin’ rule in the book from your cushy spot right on the bakufu’s lap, but to  _ we common folk? This,”  _ he raps his knuckles on the black laquer of the sheath, “is about as  _ common  _ a thing to just be walking around with as a sniper rifle. Unless you’ve got one of those, too?”

To further punctuate this extremely correct and important point about the state of their  _ covert assignment _ , Gintoki makes a frenzied show of checking for the strap of a firearm case on the front of Hijikata’s chest, peering around his sides and patting at his clothes as obtrusively as he possibly can. It quickly earns him a hard, physical shove and an even harder facial expression.

“In case you forgot, we’re almost definitely walking directly into an armed ambush,” Hijikata nearly snarls at him like some kinda feral wolverine. “If you wanna try your luck barehanded that’s your own goddamn business, but don’t expect me to keep your sorry company on the funeral pyre.”

\-- of all the pointless fucking thick headed,  _ obtuse--  _

“ _ Ha, _ couldn’t have said it better myself!! When they see you coming ten miles away, swinging that thing around in broad daylight,  _ maybe _ I’ll stick around to send you some well-wishes for the afterlife!! Hell, when you get there you better make sure to finally give a real honest face to face  _ apology _ to--”

\-- It’s the turn of phrase Hijikata unluckily chose to employ, and the combination of things Gintoki has personally been stewing over for the past entire day and a half already, and the careless frustration of the moment that all compel him to take it just that one extra step  _ way _ too far.

He feels himself starting to say it and  _ immediately _ his tiny useless peanut brain pumps the breaks, just in time to stop before her name comes out of his absolutely wretched fucking irredeemable bastard mouth. But the implication of it is already clear, smothering the angry tension in the air and setting cold and hard atop it like three tons of solid concrete.

The angry creases have smoothed right out of Hijikata’s face as he looks directly back at Gintoki, where they’ve both stopped dead in the middle of this narrow and empty dirt road. There’s no hostility in his expression, no dare to finish what he started, no hint towards the danger of some physical reprisal.

“I’m not going to the same place as her,” he says, simply.

He readjusts the weight of his sword on his shoulder. “I’ll figure out a way to hide this. Can we get moving?”

Before waiting for an answer he starts to walk again, a little bit more patiently than he had been before.

Like  _ he’s _ the one who just got hit so hard below the belt he should be able to taste his own guts coming up his throat, Gintoki is stunned completely silent. He can feel how tightly his own lips are pressed together, as if it’s not far too late already to stop himself from saying what he did. 

Faintly, there are some birds starting to chirp off in the brush.

Hijikata is slowly widening the gap between them, one step at a time.

“Wait. I-” 

Frantic beyond what he’s got any right to feel, Gintoki scrambles up the path after him.

“Don’t,” Hijikata preempts, as their paces match again, still in that same… completely collected, dispassionate manner.

“Huh? I haven’t even--”

Seriously, what-?

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Hijikata continues to say, elaborates, his gaze held straight ahead of him. “I’m sick of that crap, and I’m not even the one who should be hearing it, so don’t.”

There’s… there’s nothing  _ wrong _ about what he’s saying, nothing absurd or objectionable really. Gintoki isn’t the authority on how other people should be feeling about the death of someone they knew and he  _ didn’t _ , not really.

It’s not his place.

It’s not his business.

It’s nothing he’s got anything particularly new or insightful to say about.

So  _ why _ , then, does he just feel like he has to--

Why does he even  _ want _ to say, just,  _ something _ , anything at all, to make this even a little bit less--?

“We… didn’t talk about you, you know.”

Ahhh, there he goes  _ again _ . Why can’t he ever just keep his mouth shut?

Hijikata turns to him, brow slightly furrowed, whether from confusion or irritation Gintoki doesn’t know but it sends a panicked thrill through his heart all the same. Before it occurs to him to think he just keeps talking.

“When, you know, I got roped into that lunch, and then later that afternoon too, and then… uh… later…”

Hijikata is still just watching him talk, if, if that’s even whatever the hell he’s doing can be called in the first place.

“She never, uh… y-you know.”

That’s the limit of what Gintoki can manage before he falters completely, his eyes fleeing to the dusty ground in front of his own feet. His head feels completely empty, and at the same time like it’s got ten thousand mosquitos inside of it. There could be an entire layer of lead between the skin of his face and all the other organs underneath it. 

He is in total bewildered awe of his own goddamn self, and the truly  _ bizarre _ words and actions coming from it like they’re being fed through fourteen different languages of auto-translation. 

He’s bewildered, horrified, nauseous- he  _ definitely _ couldn’t blame Hijikata for being any combination of those things in response.

Whatever he is, it’s making him start to frown some more. Gintoki catches him open and close his mouth a few times from sneaky glances, but eventually he comes to a total stop in the road again.

Numbly feeling like… like a naughty child, about to receive some kind of reprimand for breaking a piece of pottery, Gintoki stops too and waits for him to say or do whatever it is he’s about to say or do.

“What the hell are you  _ doing? _ ” he asks, demands, really.

Good question.

“Why-” he sputters, without giving time for an answer, looking frustrated now, the bridge of his nose and the skin between his eyebrows starting to bunch right up in that familiar way.

“Why are you  _ saying _ any of this shit? What are you trying to pull, here, before we’ve even  _ started _ what we’re supposed to be doing?”

‘Pull’, he says, as if Gintoki planned  _ any _ of this-

“If you think… If you think I’m, I’m gonna  _ fuck _ you, in the middle of something  _ this _ important, and you’re trying to, I don’t know, clear the air or set some kind of  _ mood _ or--”

_ That’s _ what does it, that’s what  _ finally _ puts Gintoki back in his right mind again and buckles him right the fuck in there for good measure.

“ _What?!_ Hahahaha! _Ha,_ okay, _hold your horses_ there cowboy! You think I’m tryin’ to get you to _yeehaw_ with me at six in the morning here in the middle of nowhere, when I’m getting _paid_ to go on some shitty camping trip with you just because you can’t clean up your own dogs’ shit by yourself?! _Ain’t_ _happening!!”_

“Of course it isn’t!!”

“Oh!!  _ So _ glad we’re in agreement, then!!”

“Same here!!!!”

And that’s the definitive end of that. As heavily in  _ agreement _ as they both are on the topic, they manage to silently agree further on the course of action where they just start walking again and keep both their stupid mouths shut. With Hijikata in the lead, because Gintoki naturally wasn’t paying attention to the route Kondou explained either and they both know it.

It’s not even sunrise yet.

It is  _ too  _ early, for  _ any _ of this shit.

He’s sure as bloody hell not talking about it anymore, but now Gintoki can’t stop  _ thinking _ about it- the very idea that he’d be trying to--

\-- fuck’s  _ sake _ \- 

It’s not the idea on its own, that he’d be angling to get with someone on the back of irritating shared circumstance and little else- he definitely is that kind of opportunistic scumbag and it’s sure no secret. That’s not what’s still got his head swimming,  _ frothing _ , like it’s full of sharks at a dive tank and the boat guide just chucked seven buckets of fish corpse into the water.

It’s the fact that their most recent “rendezvous”, if you’d even freaking call it that and Gintoki sure as hell _wouldn’t,_ was entire _months_ ago and was such a categorical mess in pretty much every definition that he basically just wrote that whole sometimes _casual physical_ _arrangement_ of theirs off as a complete wash the second it wrapped up.

It was a total wreck.

_ He  _ was a total wreck.

Physically, first and foremost- though not really by a wide margin when he thinks back on it.

He doesn’t like thinking back on it.

It was… it was weird. Weird, embarrassing, sloppy, and none of those in the sexual department either.

He woke up after with a fever and fresh, clean, neatly wrapped bandages, and just remembering this now is making him want to squirm out of his own skin so that means it’s a great time to stop dwelling on it.

Either way he’d been positive right to hell and back that that was the curtain call. He’d not been himself, and--

… No, that’s not even a little bit true. Such a skilled habitual liar, Gintoki is, it comes first nature even inside his own head. Sheesh.

He’d been way too  _ much  _ himself.

Showed too much, shared too much, spilled the big hideous freaking mess of that all over the damn place, and as usual that was the end of that.

Not the first time things shook out that way, he told himself in the days afterwards, and almost definitely wouldn’t be the last either. Time to just take his lumps and move on. Pretty easy to do anyways, considering the fact he was basically held under house arrest for the whole next month while his body knit itself back together. No shortage of daily nuisances to keep his mind off it.

His mind was  _ still  _ off it-  _ completely  _ off it! On a whole different  _ planet _ from it! In a separate goddamn solar system from it!! - until Hiji _ baka _ brought it right the fuck back up himself, like it’s been on  _ his _ mind this entire freaking time--

…

...... 

………  _ has _ it been?

With literally nothing else to look at within eyesight besides some empty crop fields on either side, no matter how much the guy’s gonna whine about it, Gintoki has resumed staring at the back of his head.

It’s not very expressive, the back of his head. Without a glimpse at the other side of it, Gintoki can’t really tell what is or isn’t on the mind kicking around in there.

There’s no way, right?  _ Especially _ not with everything he’s been going through in the past few weeks, Jesus-

… right?

God, where does he get off anyways, acting like everyone and their grandma is just drooling for the chance to get in his pants?!

Ugh, but they pretty much  _ are _ , aren’t they. That’s fairly well-documented fact, despite how infuriatingly clueless the man in question himself might act about it. He’s the best looking guy in his entire crappy organization, and then within a good fifteen mile radius of that on top. At first glance he’s a fucking catch. Until you get to his repulsive eating habits and his tobacco breath and the fifty pound mortar brick he’s got inside his head instead of a brain, but the point stands in spite of those.

Aaaarrrgghhh but none of this  _ is _ the point, though!

The  _ point _ , the point is that out of absolutely nowhere, Hijikata brought up the prospect of him and Gintoki  _ bonking _ in the middle of this pain in the ass roadtrip on the way to whatever freaking corner of nowhere they’re headed to to get murdered in or whatever, and Gintoki has no idea what that  _ means. _

Of course it means  _ something, _ right?! The fact that it came out of his mouth means that it was at  _ some point  _ a possibility that he considered, whether he felt positively or negatively about it, which still remains to be seen by the way!! Sure he said it’s not  _ happening _ , but that’s a  _ whole _ separate issue from whether or not he actually  _ wants _ it to!!!

Aaaaaahhhhh  _ hell _ why did things have to take this kinda turn right off the bat, huh? Gintoki was ready for the awkward silence, the thinly veiled disgust and hostility aimed his way- he spent the last two days getting  _ nice  _ and comfy in that zone, goddamn it! He went and set up his lawn furniture there, made himself a great big old vat of bitter self-pity to just keep slurping on at his leisure, and now he’s gotta pack all his shit up and move it because Hijikata might wanna fuck him on a sleeping bag out here instead.

… Maybe right  _ now _ \- he stops in his tracks suddenly, and Gintoki almost walks right into him (where maybe they’d have taken a tumble down into the dirt together with their arms and legs all tangled up, oh noooooo).

“Uwa, watch it,” he yips, and dances out of the way of crushing his own eye into his skull on the end of Hijikata’s scabbard.

“What the hell’s that noise,” Hijikata just states more than asks really, with one of those all-business, wary kinda scowls on his mug.

At the mention of it, Gintoki  _ can _ kinda hear some sorta… weird rhythmic tapping, like, not as quick or loud as a woodpecker but still a bit comparable, coming frommmmmm- hmm, behind-?

They both turn to look, just in time for Gintoki to be the lucky recipient of a big whopping faceful of the bottom of someone’s fully occupied shoes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't remember where i said it, but all the hijigin i've written DOES take place in the same personal canon of mine- and this part of it here happens to fall the nearest, chronologically, to the events of "must be dreaming". i never intended for it to be a direct sequel to that or anything, but i realized some time ago that the point in canon this falls around is still PRETTY close to the whole benizakura kerfuffle, as previously alluded to in chapter three i think. heeheehee
> 
> (for those who haven't read it- "must be dreaming" isnt required study material or anything, but it establishes the idea that ginsan and hijikata are in kind of an occasional foes-with-benefits arrangement, where without any strings attached really they hook up from time to time to blow off steam as it's convenient. naturally there ARE feelings involved, of course, but we all know just how freaking good they are at dealing with those)


	6. Not picking favourites is much more difficult when the contestants are colluding with each other against you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are starting to get truly unmanageable- thank god for the great equalizer of sodium.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm TRYING to give myself some more breathing room here by limiting updates to once weekly, even if i've already finished the next chapter a day and a half after the previous one (like i did here lol). we'll see how long i'm able to stick to this x_x

Gintoki knows, as soon as the flat soles of those size medium-small ladies’ slippers start to connect with the tip of his nose, exactly who is kicking him in the face. 

He has a  _ lot _ of time to decide how he’s going to react to it- as expected of the technical ability belonging to someone who could easily just separate his head clean from his shoulders with something like this, the amount of bodily control going into the attack is so pinpoint that the airtime he’s starting to ascend into is more of a danger than the connection itself. (But that still does smart like a bitch.)

Ahhh, uhh, although, the landing is immediately becoming more of a concern than however he’s gonna exact his payback on the contemptuous little devil who has done this to him. The road he was on part of a second ago is pretty narrow after all, and there aren’t any visual waypoints but open sky in his whole current field of view- he’d much rather land on mostly flat dirt than whatever’s down in the fields there, there’s probably all sorts of mud and stagnant water and he’d really rather not--

The freaking, enchanted darksteel anvil Hijikata gave him to carry in that nylon sack (that  _ must _ be what’s in there, to weigh so bloody much) for whatever goddamn reason, shortens the flight considerably. Luckily enough it  _ is  _ the path Gintoki lands, and starts to skid, on- if he were the type to call a good five or six meters of road rash “lucky”, which right now, he’s not. The assortment of air-inflated snack packages and clothing items bundled up behind him cushion the worst of any impact his spine might have taken, but whatever the  _ fuck _ is in the other bag feels like it’s recklessly hammering the side of his ribcage like some toddler on a plastic xylophone until he finally comes scraping to a stop flat on his back.

Breathless, sore and bruising, an entire half of him scrubbed raw and peppered with chunks of dusty ground- it’s in this state that Gintoki sits up, and immediately feels blood starting to gush out of his nose, and then decides to hell with being  _ witty _ about this shit.

“Go  _ home!!! _ ” he hollers, around a winded and hoarse cough, whipping his arm up to point with authority at the perpetrator. She’s still in her pajamas.

“ _ Make me _ ,” Kagura shouts back at him.

Gintoki leaves the fucking Infinity Gauntlet in its pouch back where its mass anchored him to the planet, getting to his feet with all the grace and frenzied determination of a _really_ _pissed off_ newborn gazelle. 

No, nuh-uh, no, no no  _ no no NO- _

“When- how the  _ hell  _ did you-?!” __

He shambles as assertively as he can back to his liftoff point (only stumbles once or twice, only gets about a tablespoon of nosebleed on his own front), where Kagura is just cheekily standing with her own bundle of stuff tied around her little shoulders. But before Gintoki can demand satisfaction, or even just an  _ explanation  _ really, with a careful flick of those great big bambi eyes she’s got she’s able to swiftly sidestep out of the way of the rather visibly livid Shinsengumi Vice Chief making a direct collision course for her employer and guardian ( _ and _ do nothing to stop him, thank you very much for that Kagura-chan).

Hijikata sinks his fingertips into the cloth of Gintoki’s haori, so hard that for a moment it feels like he’s trying to break the skin two layers beneath it and just plunge his entire hand directly into his chest cavity. But he does close his fist instead, his whole forearm trembling from the tension and force in the muscles inside of it. Like that he keeps walking some few steps further, pushing Gintoki backwards with each one, with a glower truly reminiscent of the oni painted on tapestries depicting Hell’s fiery landscape.

“ _ Just what the fuck is going on here,”  _ he growls, with a register to his voice that’s oddly smooth and quiet, and just the slightest bit higher than the usual- a clearer sign than any of his highly aggressive body language that he isn’t just angry.

He’s  _ furious. _

Their faces are so close that Gintoki can see the pupils of his eyes have shrunken to pinpricks, like those of a hunting falcon. The arm he was using before to hold the hilt of his blade atop his shoulder is still goring Gintoki’s sternum with the press of its hard knuckles, and the other is gripping the sword now, low at his waist, the perfect height to be drawn with an easy snap of the wrist.

Gintoki feels like the tips of Hijikata’s canines just now even seemed to look a bit sharper. And he feels astonishingly conscious, too, of the fact that his own throat is exposed. His heart’s dancing a heated flamenco, allegretto.

“ _ Did ‘highly classified’ come off as a suggestion? Just a polite little tip, to be taken on your own judgment?” _

He fiercely jars his grip on Gintoki’s haori, and with that knocks the sense into him to say something in response instead of just standing here on the precarious edge of a  _ huge _ smile.

“Look, why would I show up here alone in the first place if I  _ planned  _ this?!” he rebuts. He’s surprised to hear and feel himself speaking with a significant thick nasal quality, until he remembers that his nose is still bleeding. He puts his bare forearm between his body and Hijikata’s, and wipes away some of the mess from the bottom half of his face.

Hijikata’s eyes follow the deep, bright red smear on Gintoki’s skin down and to the left a little as it cuts between them, but only for half a second. Because in the next, he’s bodily forced to relinquish his tight grip on Gintoki’s outerwear, both his hands bracing the length of his sheathed weapon against a wickedly fast kick incoming towards the side of his head.

Kagura bounces backwards off of it with simple ease, and lands neatly on her feet while Hijikata is still staggering away some steps from the heft of the blow.

“I think I finally get why Gin-chan was too embarrassed to talk about this new job of his,” she mutters, glaring forks and knives. “I’d rather eat shit than admit to buddying up with one of you assholes, too.”

Gintoki is about to laugh, at the shallow and accidental truth the kid’s managed to intuit as sharply as a bag of bricks, but it shrivels in his stomach almost immediately. He sees Hijikata straightening back up where he stands, flinging the scabbard of his sword haphazardly to the ground as a mere afterthought to the gesture of holding the blade itself fully extended in a steady line. 

Not towards him.

“ _ Leave, _ ” Hijikata threatens, his firm and resolute gaze at odds with the volcanic anger roiling with visible pressure through his entire frame. “I’m not wasting any more time on this bullshit.”

Kagura has already fallen into a low grappling stance, hands raised between her chest and her face at the ready to intercept.

“I’ll throw you the same line as before too, you punk bitch:  _ make  _ me.”

The slowly rising sun glints pale grey on the tip of Hijikata’s sword. 

Until Gintoki covers it with the palm of his hand, closing his fingers snug enough around the blade to draw blood if he squeezes just a bit tighter, or if Hijikata dares to move it even half an inch from where he’s got it brandished at a fourteen-year-old girl.

“If you’re serious about this,” he advises Hijikata, feeling more awake and clear-headed than he has for the past two entire days, “you better be pointing this thing at  _ me _ first.”

“Butt  _ out _ , Gin-chan,” Kagura says from behind him in loud protest. “If you want an ass-kicking that badly, I’ll get to you when I’m finished with this sorry bastard.”

Hijikata says nothing, meeting Gintoki’s eyes with a steely sharpness in his own to rival his weapon.

Gintoki gives an encouraging squeeze to the end of his sword, slowly exerting just enough pressure to coax it slightly lower from where it’s pointed. The edge gently begins to slide through the flesh on the palm of his hand. He feels the cool, itchy sting of this somewhere close below where his fingers start- lifeline, maybe? Wouldn’t that be cute.

“She’d win against both of us at the same time,” he says, with a thin smile that easily convinces his eyes to play along with it. “Just so you know. It’s the principle of the thing, here.”

There’s hot blood dripping down through Gintoki’s closed knuckles, and a little bit still inching sluggishly from one of his nostrils too.

It’s barely sunrise on the first day of this disastrously ill-conceived pain in the ass job, just about everything that could possibly go wrong so far  _ has,  _ and they’re not even half a mile out from the starting point.

Seems about time to start taking it all a bit more seriously, doesn’t it?

“Hello?! Are either of you  _ actually _ gonna fight me, or are we gonna have a tea party here, or what?!”

As Kagura shuffles impatiently out of her battle stance, Gintoki feels the sword starting to retreat from his grip. He lets go, watching Hijikata avert his eyes down to the ground with a deep frown.

“I vote for the tea party,” Gintoki offers, wiping his nose on his forearm again with a sniffle. “You brought sweets, right Kagura?”

She glances at his nose with unapologetic candor, then her eyes linger a bit longer on the fresh tracks of blood starting to get sticky on the insides of his fingers. She doesn’t comment on them, though.

“Of course I did,” she follows up after a short moment. “I’m not sharing, though.” She gives a quick, possessive squeeze to the ends of the bundle tied over the collar of her pink flannel PJs.

… They’re gonna have to do something about her clothes, huh.

Well, there’s probably enough extra crap in his own luggage for them to manage something halfway cohesive.

For now, Gintoki is more concerned about getting all his ducks in a row, so to speak.

“Guess I’ll have to eat someone else’s, then.” He takes a cursory glance around, notes Hijikata flicking his blood off the end of his sword and stooping to collect its sheath, but spots nobody else.

“Shinpachiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii,” he calls, to wherever the kid’s been concealing himself in the wilderness for whatever reason until now. Probably part of some elaborate plan, that Kagura went and ruined with a good running jump kick. “Get yer butt out here already and give me your snacks.”

“Don’t bother,” Kagura all but spits into the dirt at her feet, with such surprising venom it almost makes Gintoki think he’s hearing things. “That shitty coward’s probably still hiding under the blankets at home, pissing his pants and sucking his thumb.”

… A lot to take in, there.

In the first place, he sure gave up pretty damn quick on being upset that even only Kagura somehow followed him here, huh.

Lousy predictable hypocrite.

As usual.

“Well… it’s better that way,” Gintoki says, entirely for his own benefit. Ha.

Kagura snorts derisively. “God, men are all such gutless worms!” She quits sneering at the ground to sneer up at him instead, plaintively, in the blatant hope that he’ll be able to say something to prove her wrong.

He isn’t, though. Not this time at least.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Gintoki sighs. He feels, at the same time, way too young and way too old to be talking about this stuff.

“Well, some of us have more of a problem hearing it than others, though.”

He glances over at Hijikata, who’s stood by the supplies Gintoki left on the ground way over yonder, waiting for him to come pick them up himself with an exceptionally sour look on his face. As soon as he notices he’s being watched, he turns his whole body the other way.

“That sucks,” Kagura states. She looks so thoroughly miserable about it that Gintoki can’t help giving her hair a quick ruffle. With the hand that doesn’t have blood all over it, naturally.

“Yep,” he agrees, wholeheartedly. She smacks his hand away with the back of her own, though not very hard.

“You’re not gonna try to make me go home, right?” she asks, with a determined stare.

“Well,” Gintoki sighs, again, and at that alone Kagura has already started to bristle defiantly, but she needn’t bother at this point.

“I don’t really wanna get kicked like that a second time. And I can’t exactly walk you all the way back from here. And even if I did, you would just follow me again, and then we’d have to start all over. Am I getting this right so far?”

She nods, maintaining that earnest stare the entire time, not appearing to be guilty or repentant in the slightest.

It makes him uneasy.

All of this. It just… 

“What happened with Shinpachi?” he asks, maliciously stoking the clammy, itchy dread festering in the pit of his stomach. 

What kind of answer is he hoping for, here?

Does that even matter?

“I’m not talking about that little fucking prick,” Kagura grumbles, and there it is again: that look on her face, of… of bitter, disappointed hurt.

The two of them… have had their fair share of fights with each other up till now, for sure. Teenagers do that, don’t they? But this seems-

\--no, jeez, there he goes again- 

Pretty rich for Gintoki, of  _ all _ people, to be making wild generalizations here about the entirely human tendency to just… hurt each other, for no reason at all, sometimes. When you don’t mean to, when you don’t want to, when you’re  _ trying  _ not to.

He’s never seen Kagura looking like this after one of their arguments. She’s probably got the thickest skin between all three of them, and that  _ also _ makes him worry, deeply, for its own completely separate litany of reasons- but if the fallout’s got her this visibly upset, he’s starting to feel honest gut-churning nausea about the state Shinpachi could be in.

As if he even deserves to- the words Kagura has been using don’t strike him as coincidence.

‘Coward’.

Gintoki can’t stop thinking about the sight of Shinpachi sitting across from him two nights ago, shrinking into himself, furiously blinking tears out of his eyes. Apologizing. Saying he’s sorry, for not… not being good enough.

It’s all his fault to begin with, here, whatever happened between these two.

He can’t run all the way back into Edo on foot, take Shinpachi by the shoulders, and tell him “I’m sorry” or “I was lying”, can’t put his forehead right on the floor and beg as many times as it takes for forgiveness.

The entire reason he stooped so low in the first place was so he could be out here in the cold, before dawn, on the way out of town to do whatever pointless dangerous crap he’s gotta do to make sure he’s got-

To make sure-

If Kagura’s out here in the cold with him before dawn anyways, then why did he even have to-

-ah.

Ahh.

What a scumbag.

Gintoki really is starting to feel sick to his stomach.

“ _ AAH _ ,” Kagura shouts, nay, caterwauls, with a dramatic and accusatory extension of her arm. It directs his line of sight hazily to the silhouette of Hijikata not too far off in the distance but steadily getting farther, now. Seems like he got tired of waiting.

“Guess we better look alive,” Gintoki mutters with a slight laugh, feeling completely numb in the face. “Hope you brought some comfy walking shoes.”

“Why would I do that,” Kagura scoffs back up at him. “By the way, where are we going? It’s cold as hell out here, damn it.”

She sniffles.

\---

An hour later, the sun’s finally made its way all the way up off the horizon to their left, lighting the puffs of breath coming out of their mouths bright smoky white. The scenery hasn’t changed much- empty fields on either side, picked clean for the big fall harvest probably a good few weeks ago already. TIny little farmsteads off in the distance every now and then, small as Lego blocks to the eye. And right behind, looking no further away no matter how long Gintoki waits before turning to check, Edo’s Terminal towering up into the sky high above even the next tallest downtown skyscrapers.

“So,” Kagura double-checks for the third or fourth time, munching dubiously on one of those bizarre ketchup-flavoured rice crackers she sent flying out of Gintoki’s hand earlier. Her nose is pink and runny, but otherwise she looks pretty comfortably warm bundled into his haori. “You  _ really  _ don’t know if there’s actually weapons or not?”

“Nope,” Gintoki shrugs, for the third or fourth time. These crackers are weird as hell, but he keeps wanting another when he can’t figure out if he liked the last one or not.

“And you  _ seriously _ don’t even know if those smugglers were spotted there in the first place?”

(He omitted the Harusame’s actual name for the time being, until he can be sure of a private opportunity to let her know they’re not supposed to have any clue whatsoever who they are.)

“Nope,” he repeats, licking some seasoning dust off his chilly fingertips. Weird. It just tastes  _ weird. _

“What are they even paying those jerks to  _ do  _ all day,” she grumbles, with a vindictive glare towards Hijikata’s back. 

He’s keeping a steady pace a good two to three meters in front of them. His sword’s been swaddled up in the cloth he took all five of his personal belongings from earlier, to slip into his own share of the supply load, and tucked into his obi instead of brandished across the back of his neck like a big honking kanabo. It’s still very obviously a metal sword. Gintoki doesn’t have the energy to pick round two of that particular fight.

“I  _ know _ , right? Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, doesn’t it? Getting an hourly wage just to watch TV in the break room, instead of figuring out any vital case information… Maybe I should submit my resume. I think I’ve got the perfect skillset for that.” 

Despite… everything, basically, it is damn refreshing at the very least to be able to finally commiserate with  _ someone  _ now about how badly the Shinsengumi have already fucked themselves on this.

Hijikata, for his part, seems totally immune to the gossip happening literally directly behind his back. He hasn’t said a single word since he took off without them earlier, or even spared a glance in their direction to make sure they’ve been following.

On the contrary, he might be hoping that if he ignores the two of them for long enough, they’ll just go away. Heavens know he was already opposed to Gintoki alone coming along for the ride. If he had his way, he’d just do  _ everything _ himself.

… The pot calling the kettle emotionally distant, perhaps.

Ahhh, it’s the perfect kinda weather out for some hot tea now that Gintoki’s got himself thinking about kettles, damn it. Maybe he’s been carrying a camp stove with him this whole time in that crappy nylon bag, and with some ingenuity he can reheat the bottled stuff he’s got in his own pack.

He can’t remember precisely, but they do at least gotta keep going straight down this path for a  _ while,  _ right? If he and Kagura just pop a squat here for some refreshment for like fifteen minutes, it shouldn’t be too big a deal as long as they run and catch up before there are any turns on the itinerary, right?

This is already  _ so _ boring.

“How long are we gonna be walking, again?” Kagura echoes his sentiment with extra reverb.

“An amount of time,” Gintoki groans. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing you’ve got your pajamas. Beyond that, I’m afraid Gin-san doesn’t quite have the specifics committed to memory.”

Maybe he should have paid at least a  _ little _ attention during the technical half of that debrief… 

“Saaaaay, Hijikata-kun?”

Nothing.

Pretty much what he expected, though.

“Hijikata-kunnnn, are we there yet?”

This much is just entry-level annoyance. Gintoki would be  _ disappointed _ if this was all it took to get a reaction.

“Hey Kagura, you think he’s hungry?”

“Who cares.”

“A fair point, but don’t you feel a little rude happily crunching away back here while he’s all by his lonesome, starved for company and snack food both?”

“No.”

“Me neither, I was just checking with you. Heeeeeey, Hijikata-kun-- how do you feel about ketchup?”

“Hey, I’m not sharing with  _ him!  _ Leave me and my crackers out of this!”

“Relax, I’m not asking  _ you _ to share. And these were mine in the first place, so I can do whatever I want with them. Like… hmmm, for example... “

Gintoki plucks another individually wrapped snack portion from the bag overall, and briefly sizes it up between his fingers.

“Hijikata-kun, are you  _ sure _ you’re not hungry? Eating something salty might improve your mood, you know. Here, I know how  _ terribly _ shy you are, you don’t gotta say anything. The voice of your heart is coming through loud and clear, don’t worry, don’t worry. I can hear how it’s craving some rice crackers. Say no more.”

He squints to perfect his aim, maps the trajectory with a couple false starts, then flings the rice cracker at the back of Hijikata’s head. There’s a bit more drag than he expected from the wrapping, and it bounces off the small of his back instead.

There is the  _ smallest _ , yet perfectly visible jolt in his shoulders upon impact. He doesn’t stop walking, but he does slow, for barely a half step, and that’s enough for Gintoki to know he’s hit the jackpot even if not the bullseye. 

Kagura doesn’t seem convinced, from the generally unimpressed slant of her eyebrows as she keeps loudly chewing her own share of the crackers. 

Until she runs out of those, however, Gintoki has some very diverting overtures of peace and goodwill to be training his throwing arm with.

Hijikata’s gotta come around eventually, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise- shinpachi has a part in this fic!! he's got a whole pov chapter coming up!! i dont know when exactly but, it IS coming


	7. You've got nobody to blame but yourself if you're already out of snacks in the first hour of the class fieldtrip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walking and talking are today's specials- but an order of some thinking on the side would compliment either of these choices quite splendidly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm still fighting the fight here!!! this fic will be discontinued over my dead body!!!
> 
> (i DID get very stuck about half way through this chapter though. for about four months. lol)

Gintoki isn’t sure why, considering everything in his immediate circumstances that would influence his expectations, he thought they would be  _ stopping _ to eat lunch. 

He did, though. And that unconscious assumption let him dedicate  _ much _ more energy than he otherwise would have, to stooping awkwardly while walking brusquely at pace, just to pick up every rice cracker he threw at Hijikata’s head again to add it back to his ammunition. For the whole duration of  _ that _ particular whim. 

No regrets there, oh definitely not- it was funny as hell watching him  _so_ subtly start to ramp up his walking speed after not very many of the things made contact with his shoulder or his neck. By the time Gintoki lost all his ammo to Kagura’s prolific snacking tempo, though, he’d been flat-out jogging after the sourpuss to keep hurtling crackers at him. Remembering the sight of Hijikata even now, trying to look unaffected at the same time he adopted a  _ vigorous _ power-walk, his whole free arm swinging back and forth with absolutely rancorous irritation, is making Gintoki start to snicker again.

No, that’s not the point though, even if it did lighten the mood considerably (to his own biased perception at least). The point is that he worked himself up into a sweat there just to be a pain in the ass, for no actual reason, and agitated the tight soreness in his back and shoulders that  _ already  _ lingered from all the irregular chore-doing he’d done in preparation for this very journey. Because he thought they’d be stopping at noon to eat, which they’re not, and he’d get a chance to sit and rest for a couple minutes at least, which he doesn’t.

(Hijikata slid his own nylon sack off his shoulder a couple minutes ago, pulled out a  _ miserable _ looking paper bag rolled tightly in on itself to save space, and chucked it over his shoulder without even looking. There was a concentrated vitamin supplement and a protein bar in it.)

(While glad for the foresight he demonstrated in packing his own rations on top, Gintoki is already worried for their longevity if this is the standard meal fare he’s got to look forward to.)

The cheer he got from haranguing Hijikata with puffed grain snacks earlier is definitely starting to fade now, while he trades sips with Kagura of the absolutely vile little elixir in its medicinal-looking bottle.

“The only reason I’m letting you drink this,” he reminds her, around the involuntary contortions of his whole mouth that  _ still _ plague him in memory of the devil piss that was in it more than half a minute ago, “is ‘cause we’re doing a cross-country marathon, here. Keeping a good bank of energy is important.” Ugh  _ fuck _ , this is worse than the time he tried mixing a mint cream liqueur with orange soda. 

The way Kagura gets after just one of the watered-down  _ kid _ versions of these things has got Gintoki starting to worry that she’s gonna pick another fight with the guy in the group who’s got no qualms with earnestly threatening a kid with a sword. For now, at least, she seems just as preoccupied as he is with the truly abysmal medley of flavours somehow contained in one mouthful of whatever pharmaceutical hell concoction Hijikata must have passive-aggressively chosen specifically for the purpose of tormenting him.

“Do I  _ have  _ to drink this?” she grimaces, shoving that evil little bottle back at Gintoki. It feels almost empty now. Maybe he’ll be the good guy and finish the rest of it.

… or maybe he won’t. It’s nasty.

“I guess not,” he shrugs, staring down the receptacle between his fingertips, as if it were possible to intimidate the disgustingness right out of it or something. “But I doubt Hijikata-kun’s got anything better up there. You can go ask him if he brought any Koronamin C, if you want. Maybe he’s starting to feel chatty.”

Kagura gives him a look twice as viscerally disgusted as the one she got from sampling the vitamin supplement.

“Your sense of humour sucks today,” she accuses. “Why do you keep telling  _ me _ to go interact with that fucker? He’s obviously got his panties in a bunch of sailor’s knots because of  _ you _ , Gin-chan.”

Gintoki almost spits his new mouthful all down his own front, and then immediately wishes he had instead of swallowing it. It’s still gross.

“Sorry?! How d’you figure he’s not mad at  _ you _ ? Did the taste of this shit bleach your grey matter totally white, or something? He’s been  _ super pissed _ ever since  _ you  _ showed up out of the blue like that this morning!”

Ignoring, for the moment, that he was already considerably thorny towards Gintoki to begin with. That’s not wholly relevant.

“And why’s that  _ my  _ fault?” Kagura sniffs at the half of protein bar she’s been avoiding until now, and withholds her judgment on it in favour of continuing to judge Gintoki, making direct unflinching eye contact. In that way she always freaking  _ does. _ “If you’d just agreed to the job on behalf of  _ all  _ of Yorozuya Gin-chan like normal, instead of trying to pull this pointless lone wolf bullshit, then this morning would have been totally fine.”

Daring him to argue, she puts the whole rectangular block of whatever it is in her mouth at once, chews it a single time, and swallows it without batting a lash.

That by itself is enough to render him speechless, but frustratingly, he’d have been hard-pressed already for a rebuttal.

Kondou never mentioned or even implied Gintoki’s young wards slash employees,  _ sensibly, _ the entire time they spoke about this and that and how not to wipe your ass with poison ivy and so on. His opinion of the Shinsengumi as a whole couldn’t actually get much worse than it already is, but its Chief as an individual human would have taken a pretty big goddamn nosedive in Gintoki’s personal esteem if he’d had any kind of  _ favourable  _ view on including two kids on an op possibly involving, in his own words, just about the most dangerous criminal organization in the known universe.

So, strictly speaking, going in on this thing as a trio, “like normal,” was never a plausible course of action in the first place- for now he’s glad for her company at least, but Gintoki is still 100% of the mind that Kagura should  _ not  _ be here-  _ strictly speaking _ .

When you strip away all the minutiae... she’s right, though.

It  _ is _ his fault, of course, that the confrontation and resulting flaring tempers from earlier in the morning happened, yes.

Everything’s always his own bloody fault, isn’t it.

“That’s what I thought,” Kagura gloats. She’s started making eyes at the partially vacated foil wrapper in Gintoki’s nearest hand to her, where he’s been saving it for his second course. “Are you gonna eat that?”

He sighs, and holds it out to her.

“Just don’t go and swallow the packaging too in a hurry, you glutton.”

Chew, aaaand  _ gulp.  _ Thar she blows.

“I’d be fine if I did though,” she brags. “The Yato can digest pretty much anything, if we try hard enough.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean you  _ should _ .”

As a matter of scientific course, the sun has been traveling much faster overhead than the three of them have been over land since it rose. The climate is still brisk and cool, but with clear heavens and a massive ball of fire some bajillion light years away therein, the temperature has climbed enough to make just the simple task of walking enough to generate sweat if you’ve been doing it nonstop for six hours or so. Gintoki’s feet are in a bearable state of soreness for the moment, but coupled with the highly unpleasant sensation of musk collecting under his arms and on his back and far less palatable places than those to dwell on, his body’s beginning to pitch some extremely convincing arguments to his general mood in favour of becoming cranky.

Likely due to her absurdly convenient and hardy DNA Kagura seems unbothered by such things, but only for the moment. Gintoki doesn’t know when specifically to start expecting it, but she  _ is _ going to start complaining at some point in linear time that her feet hurt and that walking is boring and that if he’s a gentleman then Gin-chan will carry her.

For now, she’s occupying herself by performing a murmur-volume acapella cover of one of Terakado Tsuu’s more foulmouthed songs.

(Once he recognizes it, it takes Gintoki’s thoughts straight back to Shinpachi, and the knife he buried in his own stupid gut thrashes around some more.)

If Hijikata is annoyed at all by Kagura’s off-key warbling full of curse words, he’s being a remarkably good sport about it. That’s how Gintoki chooses to interpret his continued deep freeze, at least. If only that could actually physically drop the temperature a little- just enough to soothe his concerns about developing any really bad sweat stains, before they’ve got access to clothes washing facilities.

Maybe it’s a bit cooler up ahead a few metres there, next to where he’s walking instead of behind. Gintoki doesn’t really feel up to trying to find out, yet.

… For better or worse, Hijikata has no real choice but to end his silent treatment before they arrive at their destination. Whether he likes it or not they need to come up with a coherent and believable cover story, one that involves a teenage girl now, and that’s not just gonna happen all by itself without any discussion. Barring the sudden development of a telepathic link between the two of them.

Gintoki decides to test for one-  _ Quit ignoring me _ , he says to Hijikata with his brainwaves.

Nothing.

You could probably still ignore somebody telepathically speaking to you, he reasons, and abandons the whole idea as moot.

_ If you heard that and blew me off, then go kick yourself in the nuts, you jerk, _ he tries one more time, then  _ really _ abandons the idea.

Whenever it comes, the ice-breaking exchange of words to preface their brainstorming session is gonna need a freaking twelve foot long diamond-titanium alloy pick now. Ugh.

… So it’s better to start hammering away at it ASAP in case it needs several attempts, huh. Double ugh.

Looking at the increasingly familiar shape of Hijikata’s back, that small and yet highly significant distance ahead, Gintoki feels that he might need a campfire to warm up the construction zone a little. Probably better to try it when the guy’s got no choice but to be in the same static location anyways. 

Knowing his luck, that could just lead to another physical altercation- cornered dogs, and all.

Well… until it starts getting dark out, that’s a potential situation Gintoki can easily avoid thinking about how to resolve.

Christ, why does he keep having to  _ do _ this shit?

_ This! _

All this wry and vaguely apologetic  _ hand-wringing,  _ while he tries to mediate between everyone’s bruised and swollen egos and hurt feelings! If the past few days have shown him anything, it’s that he is  _ vastly _ less competent at it than he would have thought before.

… There  _ is _ a solution, of course, though maybe only a partial one:

Just stop hurting peoples’ feelings?

Jackass.

The answer’s always gotta be way closer at hand than you’re ever really comfortable taking a look, huh.

Whatever! Gintoki isn’t hurting anybody’s feelings  _ now, _ is he?! Not at this precise moment in time, at least! If anyone’s feelings are getting hurt by the fact that he’s just obediently putting one foot in front of the other here, mouth  _ shut  _ while he swishes his own spit around in it trying to rinse out the aftertaste of that disgusting goddamn “lunch” he just finished, that is fully beyond his control!!!

So that’s what he decides to keep on doing, and does, and continues not hurting any more feelings.

For maybe half an hour at that, producing nothing but footsteps and the occasional yawn, until a certain someone jumps directly on to his back without so much as a “by your leave”. Clinging there around his neck, like a koala loaded up on athletic steroids. Undoubtedly crushing even more of the poor innocent snacks that broke Gintoki’s fall earlier in the day. They’re not gonna be good for anything at this rate but bird food, jeez…

“I’m taking a nap,” Kagura announces, refusing to shimmy helpfully out of the way as Gintoki tries to swing that horridly abused bindle of luggage around to his front where it might face less punishment.

“Okay,” he concedes, and reaches here and there behind his own head, fishing for the back of her (his? It’s  _ his _ outerwear she’s got on now, damn it!) collar. He finds it pretty easily, and grabs ahold. 

“Try and catch up to us before the sun sets,” he advises out of goodwill, leaning forward a bit to give himself more space to peel her away from his shoulders. “It’ll be tough even for you in the dark.” 

Shit. No matter how he pulls, she’s not letting go. 

“Sleep--” 

-aaahh come on, get  _ off _ you little goblin- 

“ _ \-- tight-” _

… Unfortunately, tragically, he has not the number of joints in his arms it would take to successfully pry this person-sized barnacle off his back without any help.

… 

… … 

… … … Should he go make this Hijikata’s problem too, or-? Ah, no, he’s still walking, huh. Yep, there he goes. Damn.

More importantly, what the hell did Kagura  _ bring _ with her?! Her own bindle weighs like a goddamn cubic metre of obsidian!!!

Gintoki expresses the thought, in exactly those same words, and is met with predictable indifference.

“I didn’t know what to pack,  _ thanks to a certain mop-headed son of a bitch _ ,” she professes with an audible shrug, squeezing tighter around his waist with her sturdy little twig legs to balance it out. “So I just grabbed a bunch of everything. You’re the one who said it’s better to have too much than it is to have too little, Gin-chan.”

“Sure, but I was talking about  _ breast tissue!! _ ”

“There’s more to life than boobs, you simpleton! Like food, and money, and daytime TV!!”

“If you brought the whole damn TV with you that would account for how much you weigh right now, at least… On that note, get off me.”

“No. I’m sleeping. I had to get up super early to run after you, so I’m tired. A growing girl needs her beauty rest.”

“Then stay home next time, and spare us  _ all _ the inconvenience, huh?! It’s still a straight shot all the way back to Edo, you know! It’s not too late to go back and nap till you’re crowned Miss Universe!!”

She immediately smacks the back of Gintoki’s head, not brutally enough to make him see stars or chirping little yellow birds of indeterminate species, but more than sufficiently hard to convey that it is still  _ way _ too soon for him to be throwing jabs about such a contentious issue. 

… The palm of his hand only really stopped actively bleeding an hour or two ago, after all.

And he wasn’t even 30% joking just now, to be honest.

He can clearly feel Kagura glaring, with microscopic precision, through the back of his skull at the specific part of his brain that makes him experience the emotion of “guilt”.

He’s getting pretty sick of that one!

Gintoki stops in his tracks, with a deep sigh. Naturally, Hijikata has been gaining distance again this entire time, and he continues to do so without hesitation. His footsteps already sound pretty quiet.

“... Look, my, my bad. Okay? I said it earlier, and stuff. That I’d quit telling you to go home. So, that was my bad.”

It’s scary enough when Kagura gets  _ quiet  _ about something instead of outraged, and not being able to see her face brings at least thrice the terror. But she hasn’t whacked him again, and soon enough she mutters a sullen “Apology accepted.”

It feels like she’s crossing her arms back there- she still hasn’t gone back to the “sleeping” she was doing before, hugging around his neck with the bite force quotient of sixty saltwater crocodiles. So obviously… no, apology not completely accepted.

Which seems only fair, considering it was a  _ pretty _ crappy apology, even by his own standards.

“Seriously though,” Gintoki gripes, breezing right on past the emotional tension handily as ever. It’s not his hat trick for nothing. “You weigh a  _ ton  _ with all that junk you brought with you, I’m not even kidding here. It might be fine for you and that miraculous physiology you’ve got, but spare a thought to the ride you’re hitching, huh? Sharks have those little guys that stick to their bellies, right? Remoras? Well, I’m the shark here, and instead of a cute little remora I’ve got a  _ blue whale _ glued to me right now.”

“Sharks die if they’re not swimming,” Kagura deadpans. She grips his ribs with her knees, still cruising hands-free, and smashes the metaphor to smithereens by kicking in her heels like you’d do to spur a horse.

Entrusting the rare and elusive whale-remora-equestrian’s sense of balance to her own damn self, Gintoki slouches and completely drops his arms, letting them dangle zombie-like as he groans, also zombie-like, through his attempt at a first step forward. 

It’s tough.

It’s really, really tough.

The half of the ubiquitous “supplies” that Hijikata foisted off on him right out the gate was already uncomfortably a little heavy on top of his personal luggage, but his burden in weight has now more than sextupled, at  _ least _ . Kagura’s pretty tiny for a fourteen-year-old honestly, and he’s already more than used to surprise attacks thrown with the mass of her entire body- but she must have brought half the goddamn kitchen with her  _ including _ the appliances, because this luggage of hers, fuck’s  _ sake-- _

That good old expedient and feather-footed HIjikata-kun, by the way, is still skipping along up ahead, now likely out of earshot and getting dangerously approximate to  _ eye _ shot too.

Thanks, Hijikata-kun!

We’d truly be lost without your inspirational team spirit!!!

“I’ll--  _ make you-  _ a deal-” Gintoki wheezes, resigned to the impromptu Saiyan weight training regime making his knees and thighs and hips and shoulders, and every other single part of his body, really truly  _ burn _ from the exertion that each individual step puts upon it.

“Gross, don’t talk right now. You sound like you’re in the middle of pooping,” Kagura comments with mild distaste.

“-- If I- keep doing this- as long as--  _ I can--” _

-aaahhh, how did Goku and Piccolo and Vegeta and everyone do this shit every single time they needed to power up before fighting a new enemy?!?! Muscle growth doesn’t  _ work _ this way, does it?! They even had Gohan in on this insanity too, didn’t they?! That would  _ seriously _ screw up the physical development of a little kid!! What the fuck were you thinking, Goku?! He’s your son!!!

The only part of him that feels like it’s expanding right now is his head, he’s definitely starting to pop a vein already--

“--then  _ you--  _ gotta carry me- after I have an aneurysm-  _ and die here- Okay!?” _

Talking is making it a lot more difficult to breathe safely, or at all, so Gintoki decides to just put his energy towards that instead. Dramatics aside, he manages to keep moving. It’s not pleasant or fun, or fast, or average-paced even, but he manages.

Barely. It’s still pretty _goddamn_ tough.

He feels Kagura’s forehead bump on to the back of his shoulder after a couple minutes of generally agonizing progress. He’s  _ definitely _ gotta have sweat stains out the wazoo now, and besides the smell of that, all the panting and grunting that comes with the Herculean labour of just keeping himself moving forward here can’t possibly be conducive to a restful nap.

She’s surely not gonna be getting any of that beauty sleep she wanted, but… she’s not complaining, either. So Gintoki isn’t gonna begrudge the kid her weird and uncomfortable choice in places to rest her eyes for a bit.

It’s not that it’s _boring,_ exactly, carrying two and a half peoples’ worth of baggage and a whole one of those very people herself. He’d much rather simply be bored than be in the immediate physical situation in which he cooperatively, even, finds himself. 

All the same, here he is again, left completely to his own devices in terms of finding entertainment to sustain him while his entire body is literally collapsing in slow-motion. He’d been expecting at least a  _ couple  _ rounds of shiritori by now- it’s been over half a day already!! Is it sad that Sakata Gintoki, fully grown man and working member of society, is apparently more difficult to keep pacified during a roadtrip than  _ the _ stereotypically hyperactive teenager?! He  _ feels  _ like it’s a little sad!!

By comparison, Kagura’s uncharacteristic melancholy is more than a touch disturbing the longer he’s exposed to it in such proximity. But he at least knows better, after  _ so _ many screwups today, than to give any more tries at puzzling it out through direct inquiry.

At any rate as long as she’s “sleeping” back there, playing something like shiritori or “I spy” against himself is right out of the question anyways, as is the prospect of some one-man theatre or karaoke. It’s not like Gintoki really listens to much music of his own volition anyways, besides what the brats argue about putting on.back at the office.

Maybe it’s because he’s feeling a little lightheaded from exertion all of a sudden, but he’s having difficulty remembering what his  _ own _ interests and hobbies are. Just for stuff to think about in the physically taxing absence of anything else to do with his conscious mind. Hobbies… He  _ does _ have some of those, doesn’t he?

Let’s see…

… umm… 

… Gambling? 

Drinking? Eating?

No, those aren’t really “hobbies” as much as two vices and a tier one basic need on that Maslow guy’s crappy triangle. The food group triangle is more fun to look at than that one.

He  _ has _ hobbies, right???

Everybody has hobbies!!! Even grouchy, stuck-up  _ Hijikata _ has hobbies!!! He’s got smoking, and mayonnaise-

N… no, those… those are just more vices. Nobody  _ needs _ to put mayo on their curry rice to survive.

Speaking of the other thing though, now that he’s thinking about it, Gintoki feels like he hasn’t seen Hijikata light up a smoke even once all day long. There’s been so much mayhem and unrest that he didn’t even notice, but now that he has, it’s striking him as weirder and weirder by the second. 

The guy’s far enough ahead now that it’s impossible to tell visually if he’s puffing on one or not, but the total lack of that acrid and mature burning tobacco scent in the air is certain confirmation that he isn’t. That nicotine addiction of his pretty famously gets worse with stress- he  _ must _ be going cold turkey for whatever reason, to have not demolished a whole pack already after the fucking day that today has been so far.

Gintoki is willing to bet that if he caught up right now and took a big whiff, Hijikata’s clothes would still have eau de cigarette oozing from their every fibre. Partly because he’s only  _ got _ the one kimono.

What’s made him supposedly just up and quit for the day, though? Somehow it seems too notable to be a little spur of the moment whim. Health benefits are about as likely a reason as Gorilla-In-Chief using his professional authority to just  _ make _ him cut back, instead of hand-wringing about it like a fussy mother in law.

Lung cancer’s a pretty brutal way to go, it’s true. Not that Gintoki knows from personal experience, particularly. It’s just a commonly known fact nowadays. People still smoke though. 

People like Hijikata, who are constantly inviting a quicker and bloodier death to come stand on their doorstep every day, generally don’t need to worry too much about the longterm effects of inhaling carcinogens.

Gintoki finds himself wondering when Hijikata started smoking. As long as they’ve been bumping into each other at restaurants, he’s always had a little white stick poking out from between his lips, and looking so easy and natural about it he might as well have been born with one in his mouth.

Well, there’s a general limit to how early it  _ actually _ could’ve been within the realm of mere statistical probability. It’s pretty pointless trying to guess, though. Before some annoyingly handsome guy with a battle-hungry look in his eye climbed up on to the roof with him to toss him a sword, Gintoki doesn’t really know Hijikata Toushirou at all. He doesn’t really have a reason to know him, either.

He’s free to keep his hunches though, and those are telling him there’s absolutely no way someone who is so constantly pushing the boundaries of how punkish he can act at his government job would wait until he was legally allowed to be buying cigarettes. If it’s not a fairly recent development in the grand timeline of Hijikata’s life, that is. Like humans in the history of the universe, or something.

Either way it’s definite fact that a certain caveman would’ve been crying and clutching his pearls about it the moment he found out, whether in the Mesozoic or Cretaceous era. The idea of a scrawny teenage Hijikata hiding smokes under his futon in some shallow middle school rebellion strikes Gintoki as the funnier one, so that’s where he decides to put his money until he learns anything to the contrary, if he ever does.

Hah. What a poor example he would’ve been, to little baby Okita-chwan!

On the other hand, that one’s already so rotten he seems like  _ he _ could’ve been the bad influence. For all the time big sis spent trying to straighten him out when he was still growing, that crooked little twerp.

… Maybe…

… Hijikata, maybe he used to knock it off. 

The smoking, around Mitsuba. At least back then.

If he was even smoking yet, that is.

Her health was always pretty terrible... wasn't it. 

She told him something like that with a little smile, when they were eating lunch at that family restaurant, didn't she.  


Abruptly, Gintoki isn’t having very much fun anymore, thinking about all these far away what-ifs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time on gintama: pov switch B-) and PROBABLY not to who you're expecting!
> 
> and from here on in, we're coming up on a LOT of individual scenes i've been absolutely dying to write for at least a year, wahahaha


End file.
